A New Attitude Towards Pain and Suffering

There's something quite sublime about pain and suffering. It is only pain that can allow us see certain things. Suffering and deprivation, occasionally serve as instruments that awaken us to the reality and existence of certain things and certain people in our lives, who otherwise we would never think of. How suffering is good in this regard, we can only appreciate when it's past, in retrospect, for no sane man could ever be glad that he is suffering; yet the wisest are glad they suffered. According to Virginia Woolf in her essay "On Being Ill" she explains that the sick man can finally think about the sky, He never would have had had he always known wholesome health all his life.

We cannot always be happy. Happiness would not be happiness if there was no sadness. If there was no other emotion in the world that men would be disposed to but happiness, happiness would lose its meaning. Happiness is what it is because sadness is what it is. For happiness to be what it ought to be, sadness is indispensable. We need the sadness in order that we may understand why happiness is such a blessing. When people always get us, when we always want what we have, when success comes easily to anybody who wishes it, what would it mean? It would be intolerable.

Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable- Virginia Woolf

It is clear then why A. W. Tozer would say: if we never come down from the mount of blessings we may easily come to trust in our own delights rather than in the unshakable character of God; it is necessary therefore that our watchful Heavenly Father withdraw His inward comforts from us sometimes, to teach us that Christ alone is the rock upon which we must repose our everlasting trust.

When we do not fail occasionally, we may forget what it actually means to do well. Even if in part, could this be a probable explanation as to why some people would go to the lengths of actively creating trouble for themselves, and inflicting pain on themselves. Could it be because life isn't life without it's messiness? Certainly, it is the struggles, the striving, the sighs and the pains that give life its meaning.

We need the heartbreaks, so that when we are finally loved, we can truly know what it means to be loved with such fervent passion, with no qualms or conditions. It warms our hearts to know everyone loves us, when everyone praises us, but then we find ourselves asking the question, "what does my life mean?" Just like Jephthah in Judges 11 many people have become great because they were rejected. Denied any inheritance and rejected by his brothers for being the son of a harlot, Jephthah went on to become a great army commander. He still, probably, would have had become so great a man had they embraced him as a brother from the beginning, but that would have been quite unlikely. Rejection, pain, disappointments, betrayals, these things not only come to crush us, but to prove us.

Privation, inconvenience, and ill-health should open our eyes to see the Lord, to see all that he has made available, all that that in good health looks mundane and dispensable. We need the rejection, the lady we think to be a queen needs to turn down our proposal, so that we could at least come down from our high pedestal and reconcile our state with the general plight of humanity. A lady may need to be broken so that she may stop thinking of herself an angel. We need the pain, we need the suffering, so that we can at least learn our lessons. Let us not run from the wilderness, let us not shun away the night, it has its lessons to teach, and we do well to learn.