Pain Is The Price of Admission

We inhabit a world of hurt. Pain is an ever-present possibility. Grief stalks us. This is not just true of people in third-world countries suffering deep, grinding poverty. This reality is not restricted to the victims of violent regimes in the Middle East. It is the human condition. Pain is no respecter of persons. It comes to us all. To take part in the journey of life, pain is inevitable and unavoidable. Part of our Christian hope is that God will someday lead his creation beyond pain. We have the hope of a world beyond hurt. But our present world is quite different. For now pain remains the price of admission into God's good creation. What we see in the Bible portraits is people who learned how to transform their pain. They learned that by grace we can transform our pain into a kind of grace: A grace that heals.