Suffering & Pain – Our Unwelcome Reality

Suffering and pain are woven into our human experience.  From the day Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit they have been our unwelcome companions. From the day of our birth, pain is our experience.

Some have it better than others but, ultimately, no one is exempt. Each must carry their own burden. Each must share the worldly load of suffering and pain. Yet, some seem to carry more than their fair share of the load. They carry a load that should be shared by dozens.

It is for such that you cannot help but ask “why Lord?” Why do some people have misfortune after misfortune, pain upon pain, with hardly any consolation or solace to be found? Often, they are the gentlest and purest of souls. You would hardly feel sorrow for an evil person to encounter such, but these are innocent souls.

Innocent children going through so much hardship that they simply cannot comprehend. Hardship they cannot handle mentally nor physically. Their minds battered day by day, living a hell they can neither fully comprehend nor express. Haunted by the reality they live in that is far worse than any nightmare they could dream.

Where is help for them? Where is comfort? Where is the solution? Where is justice?

Where do you start to help? For everyone you help there are millions more in need. Who can make a difference in this vast ocean of pain and suffering? What can one cup do to empty the angry seas that swallow up the innocent and unsuspecting.

It is enough to make you want to close your eyes and not try to help or make a difference. The overwhelming tide seems to swallow everything up eventually. Our efforts seem feeble to fight against the raging waves.

Yet, maybe…perhaps, we are here to lament because God is with us. Had it not been for his goodness, the waters would have overtaken and swallowed us all up. Had it not been for his protection, the enemy would have slain us all in the snap of a finger. But God says “no”. And he is watching. He sees the pain. He sees the suffering. He sees the despair. He thinks “man, oh man, what have you done? Return to me and I will heal you and protect you.”

It is said that if you have ever lost anything at all, God is the reason you have not lost everything. But it is our nature to focus on that which is lost rather than that which we have. It is our nature to seek out pain and suffering. We seem to thrive on it, as if life would be meaningless without it.

And…it would. We have long lost the reference point of the Garden of Eden. Only two have ever known what is was like to ever be in that blissful place. They could never describe or convey its magnificence to the rest of us. Only pain and suffering are what they showed us.

Some day we will know paradise. When the Lord returns, it shall be ours again. At that time, we shall ask what pain and suffering was. It shall be wiped from our knowledge and experience. A new reality, the opposite of our current reality, will open up to us.

Till then, we must not give up. Till then we must do our best to ease the pain and suffering of those that we can. One soul maybe be all you help but think how God values that one as much as a million others. If Christ died for you, one in millions, then you can help one in millions. Maybe that is all it takes, helping one person at a time. Making one life better and more peaceful…maybe that is all it takes to make things better.

Who knows what difference one man can make. We must not grow weary in trying. We must not tire of hoping for a better tomorrow.

One man will bring it all to pass.

“Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus.”