Friday, May 6, 2016

The Passage Through Pain That Promises Peace

We can only know what we know.  It’s impossible to hold ourselves or anyone else to a standard of knowledge that we do not yet know.  It’s one reason why grace is wisdom.
We cannot know a particular level of pain is possible until we’ve actually been perplexed by it.
Put another way, we lived as if there was no pain in the world, until that is, we were cast into an oblivion of pain.  That, for us, and for others who’ve experienced it, was an education brimming with life after the death of pain we suffered.
Whenever we’re betwixt in pain, of loss, of grief, of anxious depression, we cannot reckon on the depth of pain we feel, because it’s new to us.  But a Revenant Blessing is on its way for the pain we’re enduring with hope, as we surrender on the broken days, and live on the good ones.
Such a blessing is our compensation for traversing the passage through pain; a passage through which God’s peace is promised and does indeed come.
***
Pain is a key unlocking a life trapped in fear of anguish to a life equipped to handle reality.
Yes, it’s lamentable.  Pain is unfathomable.  But pain is also part of life, and sometimes our best encouragement to get through a painful season is knowing others are going through pain themselves.  Not that that should dampen our empathy.  Everything we feel is known by God.  When we’re doing it tough, God knows how tough it is.
Pain puts us in touch with its pervasiveness over the world.  There’s pain in every corner of creation.  Enduring pain ultimately makes us heavenly empathetic, warmly compassionate, and divinely kind.  Pain, for these reasons, is not bad.
Pain endured God’s way unveils God’s promise of enduring peace.  And, in that, our concepts of pain and peace will certainly be transformed more in the likeness of reality.
© 2016 Steve Wickham.

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