The Gift of Pain, Part I

To everything there is a season. A time for every purpose under heaven…Ecclesiastes 3:1

Christmas is coming. Have you noticed it arrives quicker every year? I remember as a kid the anxious anticipation of gazing at my packages under the tree and keeping my hands in my robe pockets for fear they would find their way to the ribbon before breakfast. That was a hard and fast rule in our house. Absolutely NO opening packages until we’d had breakfast.

Before I was able to figure out a gift by its shape and the way it rattled, I would tear into each one thinking “this is the gift I asked for,” or “I bet this is the toy I wanted.” Then with great disappointment, I found socks - or my personal favorite - underwear. I didn’t care that it was practical. I didn’t care that I needed it. It wasn’t what I’d wanted or hoped for.

Pain is a lot like that. It isn’t what we want. It isn’t what we’d hoped for. But it is sometimes necessary.

And it is a gift.

I had a teacher in middle school I never liked, Mr. Fowler. He was old, grumpy, he never smiled, and he wore a bow tie. Yes…a bow tie. Every day. He was my math teacher so it was a subject I already hated, so Mr. Fowler made it more…hateful. But he was a patient, long-suffering instructor. He would work with me until I understood. He wanted me to untangle a problem, understand, and learn. Mr. Fowler was a gift to a little girl that didn’t understand math.

Pain is like that. We hate it. We don’t want it. We try to run from it. But pain, like Mr. Fowler, is a perfect instructor. There are many examples in the Word of our Father using pain to instruct His children and not because He is mean or grumpy. Sometimes our own disobedience or a bad choice brings it on, or even situations we have no part in, like the death of a loved one or a job lay-off.

Whatever the circumstance, pain is an unwelcome friend and an effective instructor enclosed in a package we must unwrap sometimes. Why? 

Because it brings correction when needed, direction when sought, focus and clarity when pressed into; It gets our attention, and that is just the beginning.