Pain That Heals
Just about everyone who has ever used a hammer has mistakenly hit his own thumb.
For most of us, doing this once or twice is enough, and we take better care the next time. But pity the poor person who repeatedly hits himself with a hammer.
Paul’s wise words have much to say about the emotional and spiritual pain so many of us seem to inflict on ourselves.
As he saw it, there are two kinds of inner pain: the pain that leads to life and the pain that leads to death.
We all cause pain to ourselves and others. Some of us do it fairly regularly, and some of us don’t even know when we’re hurting someone. But regardless, there’s more than enough pain to go around.
What Paul was trying to tell us is that godly sorrow is the kind of pain that causes us to take stock of our lives and change course so we don’t experience it again.
This kind of sorrow leads to repentance, a word that appears throughout the Bible and means “to turn back.”
The person who hits his thumb with a hammer and says, “Ouch, that hurts,” then decides to find a more productive way of driving nails has repented.
He has turned back from his old practices and decided to try things a new way.
But the person who doesn’t mend his ways, and instead keeps hammering away while his thumb turns into a throbbing mess, is following a course that Paul said will lead to death.
Unless you’re a professional carpenter or builder, your main problem in life probably doesn’t have anything to do with a hammer.
Maybe it’s your ego that you swing around like a blunt instrument, hitting everyone around you and causing pain.
Or it may be that your weaknesses and desires are what get you in trouble.
You want to do the right thing, but you succumb to temptation, breaking the bonds of trust and love that are so important in human relationships.
Regardless of what your particular vulnerability is, Paul’s words teach us an important lesson.
Pain isn’t the main problem we face in life, but rather it’s how we’re going to react to life’s plentiful sorrow and suffering.
If pain and sorrow are simply small roadblocks in our path, and we decide to speed over these bumps on the way to our destination, it’s likely that pain will be our constant companion in life and we won’t learn its valuable lessons.
But if we receive pain as an important message from God and re¬pent, our sorrow and frustrations can lead us to life.
Father, thank you for the powerful way pain can bring us to our senses. Use the pain I experience to lead me to life.