This Changes Everything

I don’t do well with pain. I have minimal tolerance when I’m in pain and no tolerance when those I care about are in pain. There’s something unnatural about pain; like it was never meant to be and needs to be fixed. When I experience pain directly or in proximity, I sometimes respond in anger. A reaction I’m still trying to figure out. Soon pain will be no more so maybe my reaction arises from a sense that it ought not to be?

I didn’t choose the imperfect or perhaps on second thought I did?

Pain causes me to wrestle with thoughts of fairness. Why does that person have to go through that circumstance? Physical, emotional, or spiritual pain; it’s all a vile thing to endure or witness.

So many questions that yield so few answers.

What I don’t understand drives me to God more than what I do understand. I have big question marks behind pain. I know the theological perspectives but when someone is agonizing in pain I’m never satisfied with textbook answers. Pithy quotes to layers of complexity. There always seems to be another layer of the why that leaves my soul unsatisfied.

My greatest question, though, isn’t regarding the human experience of pain but why God would willingly choose to participate? I don’t understand the depths of pain. There are some types of pain that are unbearable, physically and emotionally and Jesus willingly took on the full depth of pain as He endured the cross. Questions drive me to God and pain drives me to the cross. I go seeking answers but I always walk away with assurance. Not in answered questions, but in a love that beckons out of the pain. My God what You were willing to do for me! This changes everything!  

I can’t fathom the choice to bear excruciating pain for a minute and Jesus, whom had been granted all authority on earth and in heaven, willingly endured every aspect of pain for me. He lacked nothing and owed me nothing. I lacked everything and owed Him everything and yet He paid the price I could not pay. Six hours on an agonizing cross and the full weight of pain. God made a deal with Satan to exchange Himself for me. Perhaps the wrath of God is the removal of His common grace which He did to Himself on the cross. Satan made an exchange he couldn’t enforce and in so doing made possible the work he set out to destroy. But God fully endured the pain! The Father or the Son could have ceased the pain at any moment but for the reward set before Jesus They endured it. What changed in heaven from before the cross? My right to be there!

Jesus, fully God and fully man, willingly endured the greatest depths of pain so that you and I could have the right to be in His presence. He paid the price which was wrought with pain.

Pondering leads to a labyrinth of questions, but I cannot ignore the pain that God willingly endured. God suffered for me so that I might truly live! If God paid the debt I owed by dying on a cross for me (and you), it changes everything!