What of our Pain?
This past couple weeks has been an incredible roller coaster of a ride for yours truly and I wanted to talk about both pain and miracles and chose to save the “Miracles” for tomorrow or Friday. I have talked to many the past couple weeks who are in pain. In one of these conversation it was suggested that (his) pain is proof positive that there can be no good, loving and all powerful God. If it were so - then why would He not take this burden away? Why would He allow us to suffer so? Most of us, regardless of our specific faith agree that God grants free will. And free will - choice - is both the curse and the miracle of being human. And by granting us free will we become partners or as Tolkien put it - “co-creators”. The problem is that we do not fully grasp the ramifications of being “co-creator”. We see only small pieces of the grand creation and we are prone to mucking things up. Then with our defiant free-will in hand we demand to know of God - Why? Surely He must be wondering the same at that very moment. As C.S. Lewis put it so well, pain, is “God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world”. In most cases we have the opportunity to listen, to see, to hear and to get back into God’s program well before that wall hits us in the face. Sadly, we are too smart, too self-sufficient, too proud and waaaayyyy too busy so life had better just get with the (our) program. And then… BOOM!!! Anyone out there just take your mother’s word for it and never touch the hot stove? Anyone out there just take God’s word for it and not sin? No, far from being evidence of the lack of a caring God, pain is the tool of an involved, loving and oh so patient God. Pain is a tool that teaches us that we must keep our eyes, our ears and our heart open at all times. Pain demolishes our pride, demolishes our ego and pain is, more often than not, what brings us back on our knees to God and back to the miracle of life….