Shortly after the new semester started I had an interesting happening with some of my students. It was one of those situations that you decide to file in your brain because you know that at some point it is going to become useful. I feel like today it's time to pull that conversation out.
At my school, if you taught first period you were also responsible for opening with devotions and prayer. Doing devotions with a class is something I have always struggled with. I have a hard time just reading a one page story-scripture-prayer. I find that most of my students have grown up in the church and have heard a lot of what those kinds of devotionals deal with. And in many cases, a lot of the stories don't fully apply to them.
So I decided that I would share with them things that had really spoken to me. Which meant I was reading them a lot of CS Lewis, Tim Keller, and even some George Macdonald. I had one student remark that I should just get the devotional 100 Days with CS Lewis. It was a pretty tempting idea.
What I also noticed is that a lot of what I was sharing, and a lot of what my favourite writers deal with, is the idea of pain, suffering, and sorrow. At one point I had some students ask if I could maybe find some happier topics to share with them.
So I spent some time trying to scour the internet for "happy" devotionals. But in doing so I discovered something. The "happy" devotionals were either happy because they were shallow and didn't seem to deal with reality, or they were happy because they focused on how through pain and difficulty God had made Himself known.
I went back to my students and shared this with them. And none of them seemed all that surprised.
I sometimes feel bad because I know that I do focus on, as Lewis called it, "the problem of pain," a lot. But I am beginning to realize that I think that is because everything that happens to us that truly matters, is somehow tied to a level of pain.
I got out and ran five days this week. I haven't run that much in a long time. Four of those runs were 7.5km. Part way through yesterday's run my legs felt like they wanted to give out. They were hurting. My lungs were screaming for air. I was in a measure of pain. But today I feel great because that pain meant I was stretching myself. It meant I was growing and developing as a runner. When I start to feel no exhaustion and pain, it will mean I am no longer challenging myself.
To some of you, that might seem like a pretty lame example of pain. But at the same time that I am going through that, I am also dealing with the fact that my teaching contract ended three weeks ago and I have spent the last three weeks supply teaching. I went from working full time to working part time. I am trying to deal not just with the sense of loss because I no longer get to see my kids every day, but am also dealing with issues of my own self-worth because I am not working full-time. Every time I go out for a run in the mornings, I am reminded that I am only running because I am not working. And in a way, I battle feeling lazy because I am not working.
Again, that still might not seem like much to some people. But I remember talking with a friend when I worked in Williams Lake, and she said that everyone's pain is different. That doesn't make it a better or worse pain. But we are all at different places in our lives, and when we feel pain, it is still painful.
I know people who deal with chronic physical pain. People who love being active but because of things going on in their bodies, they are in a constant battle and are in regular pain.
I know people who are dealing with a court case that has to do with the murder of their son three years ago.
I know people who are trying to deal with the stress and pain of being a single parent while a spouse is away for work.
I know people dealing with infertility.
I know people who are trying to finish off high school strong. Who feel the pressure of having to be involved in extra curricular activities, church activities, and volunteer activities, while also trying to get the grades they need for university and working a job to pay for that education.
I know people feeling the pain and loneliness of rejection and of being single.
Each of us, in some way, shape, or form, is dealing with some element of pain.
In church, our pastor has been dealing with this topic fairly regularly as well, particularly because of the Tim Bosma murder trial that is going on. Tim grew up in our church and his murder struck it hard. A few Sundays ago, our pastor reference Lewis on pain. She shared the following quotation:
We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
I had a discussion with a friend about this quotation after church. My friend has always struggled with these words of Lewis' because she feels like it points to the idea that our pain is our own fault. That we are in pain because we haven't paid enough attention to God or haven't done something right. I tried to share that that isn't what Lewis is saying in his book. The fact is we live in a fallen world and there is pain and suffering. Typically speaking, when things are going well our hearts are not as driven to God as they are when we are hurting.
Yesterday I sat down and was reading Keller's book Walking with God through Pain and Suffering. I had put the book down for a while because I was feeling like I was focusing so much on this topic. But what I read yesterday tied in a lot with what my thoughts on this subject have been lately. Keller references Pope Gregory the Great and what he has to say on the idea of suffering. Lewis says that Gregory "rejected the idea that suffering was an illusion or result of capricious fate--suffering always had a purpose. Rather than being helpless victims of inexorable fate, people were in the hands of a wise God, and... we should not rail against cruel blind fate, but bear our suffering patiently" (47).
As I finished reading this paragraph, I could feel all of the "but..." responses building up in me. So I continued reading. Keller goes on to say that Gregory "also rejected... the belief that the proportion of our suffering is due to the proportion of our sins. [He] taught that while suffering in general is caused by human sin, that does not mean particular forms of suffering are always the result of specific sins. He warned against making too direct a connection between sin and suffering" (47). Gregory talks about how there is are many different kinds of suffering in the world, and that serve different purpose. Some suffering is given as a form of correction, and some is given to prevent future wrongs.
But some suffering, and I sometimes think this is what we struggle with, has no other purpose than to cause us to love God more for who He is, and to discover ultimate peace in Him.
A little later in the book Keller references Martin Luther's take on suffering. What he says seems to sum up this whole idea really well. He says that "we must not try to use patience to earn our peace with Christ--we need the peace with Christ already if we are going to be patient. We must rest in the sufficiency of Christ's sufferings for us before we can even begin to suffer like him. If we know he loves us unconditionally, despite our flaws, then we know he is present with us and working in our lives in times of pain and sorrow. And we can know that he is not merely close to us, but he is indwelling, and that since we are members of his body, he senses our sufferings as his own" (52-53).
That last part was what really hit home for me. When I am struggling and in pain, Christ is not just near me in my suffering. Rather, he senses my suffering as his own.
That night a week ago where I cried myself to sleep because I felt lonely (moving somewhere and trying to make friends is really not easy, and it only gets harder when you're no longer in school)? He wasn't just near me but felt that loneliness as His own.
Those times where I feel wholly inadequate because I am not teaching full-time? Where I feel like I don't measure up to the expectations I have for myself? He isn't just near me, but feels my pain as well.
So why do I focus so much on pain? Because pain is something all of us experience and understand. And it is perhaps the thing that we feel most deeply.
There is nothing quite like suffering through something and then discovering a person who has gone through that same thing. There is a connection that you feel with that person because they "get" you. They don't just understand what you're feeling--they have felt what you are feeling.
Why is pain God's megaphone to us? Because that is when He shows Himself to be that friend. He is not just standing beside you, patting your back and saying "There, there." But because we are members of His body, He senses our sufferings as His own. He doesn't just understand our pain. He feels it too.
Pain tends to be what draws people together. I think it makes sense that it is what draws us closer to our God as well.
