C.S. Lewis wrote: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

Last night his megaphone was working just fine.  Earlier in the day I had a root canal.  The words themselves sound unpleasant enough.  By the time I was ready to bed down for the night, I had taken antibiotics and pain pills.  I anticipated an uncomfortable night, but not a painful one.  Man was I wrong.  I was awakened in the middle of the night with sharp pains that would not reside.  I hesitated to take another pain pill because I had taken one shortly before.  So I suffered through it.  Walking the floor of our bedroom (lying on the floor when the pain was too much).  The whole time I was thinking and praying that there must be a reason why God would have me up fighting this fight.  Pain is not useless or meaningless in the providence of God.  I remembered the quote from C.S. Lewis and began to meditate on God and His doings in my life.  I meditated on the blessings that He has so graciously granted and how this pain is nothing compared to others around me.  I prayed for God’s relief and waited until he said it was enough. Thankfully, he was merciful and after about an hour or so, the pain receded, and I was able to return to the reasonable comfort of the bed.

However, as I was experiencing this night to remember, a few thoughts concerning pain came to mind.  In fact these three blessings came to me from the pain last night.  I am sure there are more to learn, but for now (mercifully) these three were all I could handle.

1.  Pain wakes us up.  Last night this was literally true.  But even more so spiritually.  Like Lewis says, pain wakes us up.  At times our spiritual lethargy is not just crippling, but it is deafening.  We are alive but not conscious of the pain in the world and the need for God’s redemptive love in all that we do.  However, when the pain is ours we are immediately awakened and we sense not only our pain but the pain in the world that needs God’s redemption in Christ.  When pain comes we are alive with groans and moans that are often indiscernible to other creatures, but the God we serve knows just what we are saying, and better yet what we need (Rom. 8:22-27).

2.  Pain throws us upon God. It was John Bunyan who said, “If I am ever to suffer rightly…I must live upon God that is invisible, as Paul said in another place; the way not to faint, is to “look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2Cor. 4:18). Nothing make us pray like pain.  Nothing makes us seek God like the discomfort of suffering.  And to suffer rightly, we must pray and acknowledge like never before that we need God.  We see only then just how sufficient His grace really is (2Cor. 12:9).

3.  Pain causes us to long for heaven. Anything that does this is a good thing.  Pain should remind us that comfort in this world is not a promised reality.  Rather, suffering is.  And though we should rejoice and bless God that he allows us to experience moments of peace and comfort in a world racked with sin, we should remember that because of sin, pain is a most common lot even among the people of God (Job 14:1).  Nevertheless, I kept telling myself last night, that this is just a momentary affliction.  And indeed in the great scheme of my life, it was.  How much more should I be reminded of this perspective with dealing with all the sorrows and afflictions of life.  Heaven is wonderful and glorious because this world is not, and thus pain should make us long for the eternal glory promised to us in and through Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:18; 2Cor. 4:17).