Pain teaches us to avoid past mistakes

Before he left the earth, Jesus prayed for his disciples and asked the Father to take care of them.

He prayed that they would not be taken out of this world but that God would shield them from the plans of the enemy.

He reminded his disciples that the world will always be full of trouble.

Pain comes in various forms such as physical or emotional. There is no character in scripture who did not go through pain.

Consider Elijah who was a great prophet of God. God literally walked and spoke with him.

Time and time again Elijah proved that he was sent by God when he performed miracle after miracle.

One day, after calling on God to consume his sacrifice by fire in a contest between His God and Jezebel’s gods, and God sent the fire and Elijah fled! Yes he fled.

Terribly scared of Jezebel who had promised to kill him if she found him.

Into the wilderness Elijah fled and when the angel found him, he was demoralised, dejected and miserable.

Doctors will tell you that physical pain is a vital component of our very existence.

If you spilled boiling water on your hand it would lead you to do three things.

First, you would move your hand away from the water — you would know that you should avoid the water because it is too hot, and third, you would avoid using the hand until it heals.

However, there are some people who suffer from a rare condition called Congenital Insensitivity to Pain with Anhidrosis (CIPA).

Such people might continue to touch the water because they are unaware of its harmful nature —there would be no pain to compel the individual to avoid using that hand and finally, the lack of pain would reduce the likelihood of seeking treatment.

This, in turn, would increase the likelihood of infection and further tissue damage.

Doctor Victor Frankl posits that between stimulus and response, there is a space.

In that space is our power to choose our response.

In our response lies our growth and our freedom. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Dr Frankl wrote about the psychological impacts of life as a prisoner in the Nazi concentration camps of World War II. His parents, siblings and pregnant wife were all killed in the camps. He describes in chilling detail how his captors took from him virtually everything of personal value and basic human dignity.

The only thing that the Nazis were unable to take away was his choice as to how to respond to the deprivation, degradation, and trauma he was subjected to.

His ability to retain that degree of psycho-spiritual autonomy in the most horrific circumstances imaginable provides a remarkable example of intra-personal strength, the grace of God under extreme duress, the power of personal choice, and earnest prayer to God.

Pain is good because it enables us to avoid previous mistakes and draws us closer to God.

It gives us wisdom and experience we would not get from textbooks, and thus, improves quality of life.

It will help us a lot to realise that pain is inevitable but suffering is optional. We will go through sickness, break ups, death, accidents, loneliness, rejection.

Our survival literally depends on how we treat this pain. The best way is to turn it over to God who will give us the serenity and grace to overcome.