The Language of Pain and Weakness.

"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." 

C.S. Lewis

Pain is always trying to tell us something important and we are always telling it to shut up.  Henri Nouwen is one of my favorite writers. He is constantly encouraging us to 'befriend' our pain. Not to cover it up, not to hide it or from it, but to follow it. Listen carefully to it until it has said all it needs to say. We're very eager to get past it as fast as we can.

Addiction is pain that can tell us we have a legitimate need but are meeting it with illegitimate means. In Changes that Heal, Henry Cloud says, "sadness and anger are two of the God-given protests against lack of love". When we try to silence those protests that help us identify our real needs we can become depressed. Addiction is a kind of pain that must be listened to carefully since "addictions are not real desires, they are substitutes for some other need of the real self". The pain is trying to tell us something important. 

"God so works that our wounds can become our best credentials for ministry.  Jesus 'showed the disciples his hands and his side, and they were overjoyed', " said Dr. Donald Joy, in a recent message, commenting on Jesus' qualifications for ministry coming from the pain he suffered. 

Pain makes us feel invalid, inadequate, foolish, uncomfortable, unlovable. We can be tempted in times of pain to doubt our true identity as members of Jesus' family. Unfortunately, we live in a culture (and a world) that hates pain and can rarely hear the opportunity in it. We want to get rid of it as soon as possible. After being explicitly told that Jesus was God's "Beloved Son with whom [God] is well-pleased" he is immediately subjected to the accuser's words in the midst of the pain of the desert, "If you really are the Son of God..." His accuser's tempting words amount to an appeal to prove his God-status by short-cutting the pain of the process. 

But Jesus knows that without the long way through the shadow-valley there can be no real change. In the desert, the devil offers quick fixes to a painful problem.  Sure, he could create a circumstance that, on the surface, would appear to be ideal. But nothing would really change. If Jesus bypassed his suffering, not only would his integrity be compromised, but we would be left with a silent pain - an impotent pain, an enduring, empty, visionless pain. 

Marva Dawn, in her book Powers, Weakness, and the Tabernacling of God,  translates 2 Cor 12.9 rightly saying, "My grace is sufficient for you, for your power is brought to its end in weakness".  My own paraphrase would be, "When your power is brought to its end in weakness, then my grace will be sufficient for you." We can grow when we admit and engage our weakness. Sadly, we are often too 'powerful' for our own good. We are smart and strong enough to find ways of coping that ultimately leave us smiling on the outside but stuck in our souls. 

Jesus 'tabernacles' in our weakness, Dawn says. When we finish proving our strength, he will be waiting to meet us there in his tent.