To Those Who Cry Out in Pain

My soul melts from heaviness; Strengthen me according to Your word.

Psalm 119:28 NKJV

No one would ever want to experience “pain,” even though pain has accompanied our lives since birth—just think of the labor of childbirth and the cry of the newborn. Pain is a subjective and complex experience of physical or emotional suffering, which can be caused by injury, illness, loss, or other stressful situations, and which can have a significant impact on a person’s quality of life and well-being. The Bible meets our humanity with passages such as Psalm 6: “Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am utterly weak; heal me, O Lord, for all my bones are trembling… I am exhausted from groaning; every night I flood my bed with weeping and bathe my couch in my tears… My eyes are consumed with grief.” We will have no trouble identifying with these expressions, longing for deliverance. Even Jesus, on the night of his passion, implored to be spared the cup of suffering (Mark 14:36) and confessed that his “soul was sorrowful even unto death” (14:34), discovering with bitterness that none of his disciples were by his side: “Could you not watch with me even one hour?” (Matthew 26:40).

An experience common to Job’s is questioning the meaning of the pain that troubles us, in the sense of causing us to lose our inner peace. And if we give it room, it can dominate us in body and mind, devour our vital energies, and knock us down. I wonder if Jesus also saw all this when he exhorted the disciples with the words “Let not your hearts be troubled” (John 14:1). Pain is generally seen as an experience to be avoided. Instead, I believe it is an experience to be lived through, or to let oneself be carried by, because pain never leaves us where it found us. I am reminded of the eagle that lets itself be carried by the wind. When the storm of “pain” lashes out against our lives, we tend to resist and swim against the current. Perhaps we should learn to discern those situations in which it is appropriate to trust the One who has authority even over the wind and is therefore sovereign over all. After all, He is in our boat, even if the movement of the waves tosses our faith about.

The question that troubles us most concerns God’s silence or His absence. The night of pain becomes endless, and a silent God seems scandalous. In the most difficult hour of His earthly life, Jesus Himself cried out in abandonment. Superficially, we boast of being “more than conquerors in Christ” (Romans 8:37), ignoring that His love found its fulfillment in His being “a man of sorrows” (Isaiah 53:3). He is born in a manger, and His parents are soon forced to flee to Egypt. In the Passion narrative, the evangelists recount Christ’s sufferings: fear of death, loneliness, betrayal by friends, torture, crucifixion, and death by asphyxiation. Through the Son, God entered human reality without fleeing from pain. He remains close as Emmanuel. It may seem sad to admit that darkness grips both believer and non-believer, but the strength of the man and woman of the church lies in realizing that He remains present.

The French poet Paul Claudel wrote, “God did not come to explain evil: he came to fill it with his presence,” while the theologian Hans Küng observed that “God does not protect us from all suffering but sustains us in all suffering.” Remember “how, with Jesus, God does not save us from suffering, but in suffering; He does not protect us from death, but in death. He does not free us from the cross, but in the cross” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer). When right here on earth we no longer have the strength and the headwind seems unrelenting, let us look to what awaits us. "And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:3-4).

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Weekly Bible Reading Plan #14

March 30, Judges 9–10; Luke 5:17–39

March 31, Judges 11–12; Luke 6:1–26

April 01, Judges 13–15; Luke 6:27–49

April 02, Judges 16–18; Luke 7:1–30

April 03, Judges 19–21; Luke 7:31–50

April 04, Ruth 1–4; Luke 8:1–25

April 05, 1 Samuel 1–3; Luke 8:26–56