This spring, after my
aunt’s knee replacement surgery, she was telling me how hard the rehab was. I
told her it would be worth the pain. She said, “That’s what they say. They say
it’s like childbirth. I’ll forget it later.”
I practically fell on the
floor. Forget it later? I asked my aunt, “Did you forget that labor hurts?
Because I sure didn’t.” The memory of pain stays with us, shapes us; and, over
time, we decide what kind of attitude we will have toward it.
Some of us wear our pain
like a badge because it shows how tough and strong we are. I have taken part in
the competitive childbirth storytelling events a time or two (My labor was 12
hours long! Well, my labor was 24 hours long!). It makes us feel strong. But others, at the mere suggestion
of pain, would say, “There’s a drug for that,” because, in their minds, no pain
is good pain. But, the reality is, pain is a part of life. Pain of the body,
pain of the spirit, pain of the heart – all of these are a part of life.
There is a young woman I
know who has had her ups and downs with substance abuse for several years now.
The other day she wrote on facebook that she was observing an anniversary, a
bittersweet remembrance. It was one year since she overdosed and almost died. A
few weeks after that day she entered rehab, not for the first time, but
hopefully for the last. After rehab, she went on to a half-way house program, and
to this day she continues her journey of recovery. She said something that
reveals a particular truth about addiction, and about life, really: that since
she has been learning how to live drug-free, she has felt more fully alive. She
has laughed and actually felt it; she has
cried and actually felt it. She has grown and succeeded, and also at times she
has failed, and was able to feel all of it.
Addiction tells you, “You don’t have to
feel any pain.” But it is a lie.
It’s a lie that many of us are drawn to,
even non-addicts, because we are always looking for ways to avoid pain. We all
have ways of distracting ourselves, or anesthetizing ourselves, trying to
protect ourselves from the pain and suffering of life.
A woman once gave my teenage daughter
some dating advice: “Always break up with him before he has a chance to break
up with you.” Because if you can beat him to the punch, no one will ever have a
chance to break your heart.
Some friends, Carrie and David, once
told me about a time, when they were relatively new in town, they met a couple
whom they very much enjoyed being with. They had struck up a conversation
somewhere, and realized they had a lot in common. But when Carrie and David
invited this couple to dinner, they declined. They said they had decided they
would not pursue any new friendships, because they realized that in the kind of
work they were in, people come and go, they move on to other jobs in other
cities. They decided that they did not want the pain of having to say goodbye to
friends when they moved away. Their solution was to not make any more friends.
When we try to avoid pain
we end up avoiding life.
I know a man, Roger, who said
when his daughter was born that he was going to put her in a bubble and keep
her there until she grew up and was ready to get married because he didn’t want
her to ever suffer any pain. And Roger didn’t want to experience the pain of
watching her in pain. He was joking, but only sort of.
If there really was a
foolproof method of avoiding any and all pain and suffering; if there was a
pill, with no side effects, that would guarantee a pain-free life; I wonder how
many of us would take it. I wonder if the Apostle Paul would have taken it.
By the time he wrote this
letter to the Romans, Paul had experienced a lot of pain for his faith. He
wrote in his letter to the Philippians that over the years, in all his experiences,
he had learned the secret of being well-fed and of
going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. Everywhere he went he
had submitted to being fully dependent on the mercy of God, trusting in God’s
grace and the hospitality of strangers, all for the sake of carrying the good
news far and wide.
But he had not always been that way. We know a few things
about the man Paul from the stories written about him in the book of Acts. At
one time in his life, Paul was a man who inflicted pain on others so that he
would not ever have to experience the pain of uncertainty or doubt. At that
time, Paul was a Pharisee called Saul, a son of Abraham. And when he
encountered the apostles of Jesus Christ, he made it his mission to eradicate
them from the face of the earth because they carried a message that turned his
steadfast, long-held beliefs upside down and this was more pain than he could
bear.
The Pharisee Saul was there when one of these apostles,
Stephen, found himself surrounded by an angry mob. In spite of the threat,
Stephen continued to preach the gospel forcefully. Then, under the watchful eye
of Saul, the mob dragged him out of the city to stone him to death. Saul stood
and watched over the brutal stoning of Stephen. He watched and he approved.
After that, Saul journeyed on to Damascus, because he had
heard there were more of these so-called Christians there. He was anxious to
arrest them and bring them back to Jerusalem for trial. The story in Acts says
that he was breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. So
fearful was Saul of uncertainty, so fearful was he of anything threatening the
beliefs he had committed himself to. So fearful, he was willing to kill to
avoid its pain.
It was on this journey, though, when everything changed. For
the first time, on the Damascus road, he heard the voice of Jesus, saying to
him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He was knocked to the ground,
helpless. For three days, Saul was stricken with a kind of blindness so that he
could learn to see in a new way.
After this he was a new man, with a new name and a new
mission. Paul, for the first time, knew the truth of the good news and was no
longer afraid. From this point on, he lived his life for the sake of Jesus
Christ and his love for the world.
From this point on, Paul knew that he was more than willing
to suffer for the sake of the gospel, because he now had something new,
something with great power: hope.
Hope might not sound like much, if you are only accustomed to
hearing it expressed in the most superficial ways. One says, “I hope the sun
shines today,” another says, “I hope it rains.” It’s a desire, usually not too
deeply felt, that means little and is often of small consequence. “I hope you
have a nice day,” I might say to someone, but it will mean little or nothing to
me if it is or is not a nice day. In this sense, hope is a flimsy word.
But this is not Christian hope. The hope that comes from
faith is something entirely different. It is not a desire; it is a gift of the
Spirit, one that gives the ability to see, to know, the possibility of a world
beyond what now exists.
Hope is the things that moves us forward. None of the
prophets would have been able to carry their message out into the world without
hope. Dr. King would not have been able to get up again and again and tell
about his dream if not for hope. We would not have written letters to our
senators and congressmen asking them to remember the least of these children of
God but for our hope that there is the possibility of a world where the hungry
shall be filled with good things. None of us would be able to do so many of the
things we do, large and small. Dottie
comes in on a Wednesday evening to prepare for JAM, in hope that the people
will come on Thursday noon and the room will be filled with great fellowship.
Last Wednesday morning a dozen or more of us came in to set things up for our
one-day VBS, in hope that the children would come, and when they left they
would know God loves them and we do too. And there are others; young men and
old women who see visions and dream dreams, who stand up and proclaim a bold
belief in a world that is waiting to be born.
Knowing that the pain and sufferings of this time are not
worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed.
Hope is the thing that
makes us better. Hope in the midst of suffering, like a woman in the throes of
childbirth, knows there is something beyond what can be seen. And hope is what
will get us there.
photo credit: By Kattiel - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60695252
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