Jeremiah 15:18

Why is my pain perpetual?

The function of pain

This piteous lament may fitly represent the anguished cry of suffering humanity, from age to age. In all lands, under all skies, in all times, the same mournful wail is heard,--a ceaseless dirge of woe, day and night, from ten thousand times ten thousand hearts, struggling with adversity, battling with disease, staggering under the weight of sorrow or suffering. “Why is my pain perpetual?” It would almost seem that men had abandoned the attempt to solve these problems; for by common consent, pain and disease, suffering and sorrow, are called “mysteries,”--“dark and inscrutable mysteries.” But they are not all darkness and incomprehensibility. These “mysteries” are also “masteries”--masterful forces in the education and exaltation of humanity. Have you ever considered what kind of a world this would be if there were no pain here, no sick beds, no sorrow-stricken homes? Have you ever reflected that these “inscrutable mysteries” are the chosen instrumentalities for fashioning the highest types of character, both in the sufferer himself and in those who minister to his suffering? Pain and disease did, it is true, come into the world as the attendants and servants of sin; but it is pity indeed if we have not learned that the Lord has made them His ministers and His servants, even as He made the thorns and thistles, the labour and the sweat, which resulted from the Fall, the means of the development of the faculties and powers of man, the fountains of progress and civilisation. The earth was once a stranger to pain, and it will be again; but in the former case sin had not entered, and so perhaps pain was not needed; and in the latter, sin will be abolished because the lesson of pain will have been fully learned. Had there never been pain and suffering, what a different world it would have been! All marsh and meadow; all plain and prairie; no towering cliffs and yawning chasms; no heaven-kissing Mont Blanc; no thunderous Niagara; no valley of the Yosemite--a dead-level world! Those lofty heights of heroism and patience which now delight the eye in the retrospect of the past, would sink into monotonous stretches of commonplace lives. Those names writ large by the pen of history, and made radiant by the light of self-forgetting devotion, would disappear with the pain or the suffering or the calamity that made them great. We may, therefore, thank God for pain, for suffering, for sorrow. Whichever has been our lot, depend upon it we arc, or if not, we ought to be, the better, the wiser, the richer, for it. If we take it patiently, as the good will of our good God, then will it prove a blessing. Then will sorrow be the crucible in the hands of the Divine Master, wherein the dross of the soul will be purged away, and the gold refined. But let us not make the mistake of supposing that tribulation--this threshing of the soul--in any of its forms necessarily produces the results which I have described. These are the peaceable fruits which the gracious Father desires and designs that they should bring forth. These are what they are fitted to produce. But we must remember that the material to be fashioned in this case is a free, self-determining human soul, whose freedom cannot be violated without destroying its very essential fibre. The effect, then, of trial and affliction, whether bodily or mental, depends upon the way in which it is received. It may embitter, instead of sweetening, the spirit. It may harden, instead of softening, the heart. And then the gracious purpose of Him who chasteneth not in wrath, but in mercy, will be frustrated and turned aside by the perversity of man. To strengthen our faith, then, let us recall some of the utterances of those holy men of old who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost,--passages in which the casual connection between suffering and holiness is distinctly stated. Saith the wise man, “The fining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold: but the Lord trieth the hearts.” Saith the afflicted patriarch, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.” “When He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” Saith the prophet in the name of the Lord, “I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined,” etc. Our Lord said, “I am the Vine, ye are the branches,” and added, “Every branch that beareth fruit, He purgeth it,” etc. St. Peter, the foremost of the apostles, writes, “Though now for a season. .. ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations,” it is that “the trial of your faith,” etc. St. James bids us etc., giving as the reason, that chastisement produces “the peaceable fruits of righteousness.” Side by side with their words let us place the deeds, the examples, of these holy men of old. One can see in the mirror of their writings, as well as in the record of their lives, that these chosen ones were, like their Divine Master, “made perfect through suffering,” or at least that their sufferings and afflictions had led them far up the path whose goal is perfection. The intensity of their conviction glows and burns on every page. When they assert the purifying effect of suffering, we feel that they are testifying out of the fulness of a personal knowledge. They speak that they do know, and testify that they have seen and felt in their own hearts and lives. But not these holy men of old alone. Men and women of our time, too, a noble army, have ascended with Jesus into the holy mount by the same arduous path, leaving us an example that we should follow their steps. How often have we seen the purifying power of pain and loss, of sorrow and trial! How often have we marked in the life of some patient sufferer the gradual unfolding of the Christlikeness, till at length the crown of thorns has been changed into a mitre of glory, on which we could trace the words, “Perfect through suffering!” You may, therefore, strengthen your wavering faith, O sufferer! in the beneficent purpose of this, God’s strange economy, by lifting your eyes to the great “cloud of witnesses” who have trod the same rough and thorny path. Your suffering, whatever its form, whatever its intensity, is not “without your Father.” You are in His hands. He does not forget you; He will never leave or forsake you; He only designs “thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine.” Look intently, O sufferer! and you will see pain slowly transfigured before your gaze till it takes on the very features of Him of whom the prophet said, “He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.” You are suffering, moreover, it may be, not for your own benefit alone, but for that of others. There is a principle of vicariousness in human suffering. Let me illustrate. A poor traveller falls ill of fever all alone in the South American swamps. There he lies for days in a wretched hut, quenching his thirst with the waters of a pool close at hand. At last this pool dries up; and with extreme difficulty, the sick man crawls to another, half a mile distant. Its water is so bitter he can scarcely drink it; but he must drink it, or die of thirst. That afternoon he could not think why he felt stronger than for many weeks. Next day he drank more abundantly of the bitter pool; and still, the more he drank, the stronger he grew, till he was entirely restored; then he found that a tree had fallen into the water, which gave it its bitterness, and gave it also its power of cure. And this is the way in which one of the most important medicines now in use was discovered,--a medicine which has saved thousands and thousands of lives which must else have perished. Even so hath God appointed that some of us should drink the bitter waters of affliction or of pain, that others may be given spiritual health and salvation. (R. H. M’Kim, D. D.)

Uses of pain

Some plants owe their medicinal qualities to the marsh in which they grow; others to the shades in which alone they flourish. There are precious fruits put forth by the moon as well as by the sun. Boats need ballast as well as sail; a drag on the carriage wheel is no hindrance when the road runs downhill. Pain has, probably, in some cases developed genius, hunting out the soul which otherwise might have slept like a lion in its den. Had it not been for the broken wing some might have lost themselves in the clouds, some even of those choice doves who now bear the olive branch in their mouths, and show the way to the ark. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Blessing of pain

Above all things let us learn this lesson from the example of Princess Alice--the quickening, purifying, bracing power of pain. In every trial that she had to undergo--and perhaps these trials were more than ordinarily severe and frequent--we see how her character developed and strengthened. To her each trial was as an April storm to a young plant or tree, lending new vigour to the roots, new power to its growth, so that when the sun shines the buds are seen to expand and blossom--those same buds which, without the rain cloud, would have shrivelled and died. Every time she was called upon to give up what she most deeply cherished, she counted, with faith and gratitude, the blessings that remained to her. “Thus do we learn humility,” she said with quivering lip. “God has called for one life, and has given me back

Chronic fain

Pascal, the great mathematician and moralist, said, “From the day I was eighteen, I do not know that I ever passed a single day without pain.”

Wilt Thou be altogether unto me as a liar.--

God misjudged

Here the prophet overfreely expostulateth with God as less faithful, or less mindful, at least, of the promised preservation. This was in a fit of diffidence and discontent, as the best have their outbursts, and the greatest lamps have needed snuffers. The Milesians, saith the philosophers, are not fools, yet they do the things that fools use to do. So the saints do oft as wicked ones, but not in the same manner and degree. (John Trapp.)