The past few years of my life have brought on experiences of heartache and pain generated by my own actions, the actions of others, or the actions of disease inside my body. Physical pain and mental pain can be absolute torment. There are days they feel inescapable and inexplicable. (This doesn’t even begin to touch on standing next to someone, helplessly, in their pain . . .)

“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “my tooth is aching” than to say “my heart is broken.”

C.S. Lewis, The Problem With Pain

Heartache has tested the hell out of my faith. Seriously, the refining process – the fire – is brutal, but to say that I have walked through or am walking through it now fully ALIVE is incredible. The forging process is excruciating, but the strengthening of spirit and virtue is worth every burn and every scar.

God doesn’t promise to save us from the fire, but He promises to be with us as we walk through it. He forges courage in us.

It’s been said that if you’re going through hell – keep going! That is my resolve to pain.

Romans 5:1-11, The Message

 

“By entering through faith into what God has always wanted to do for us—set us right with him, make us fit for him—we have it all together with God because of our Master Jesus. And that’s not all: We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise.

 

There’s more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!

 

Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn’t, and doesn’t, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn’t been so weak, we wouldn’t have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.

 

Now that we are set right with God by means of this sacrificial death, the consummate blood sacrifice, there is no longer a question of being at odds with God in any way. If, when we were at our worst, we were put on friendly terms with God by the sacrificial death of his Son, now that we’re at our best, just think of how our lives will expand and deepen by means of his resurrection life!

 

Now that we have actually received this amazing friendship with God, we are no longer content to simply say it in plodding prose. We sing and shout our praises to God through Jesus, the Messiah!” 

#pain #heartache #cslewis #bible #romans5 #art #artwork #create #life #hell #forge  #evenwhenithurts #virtue #characterbuilding

(Artwork at top: Hell of Heartache, by Darla Welton)