Pain is a Taste of Hell; Jesus’s Comfort is a Taste of Heaven

I have no clear recollection of a life without pain. 

Although it didn’t dominate my life as a young child as much as it does now, for roughly thirty years, I’ve been housed in a physical frame that’s baseline is one of physical pain and illness. 

When physical affliction is a way of life, there is no framework for what life might be like without the constant awareness of discomfort on the best days, and utter agony on the worst days. You wonder what life must be like for those who are blissfully unaware of a body that works as it should. What is it like for food to simply be enjoyed rather than feared for the pain it might trigger with it? What is it like to think without pain-fractured thoughts, make plans without caveats, or begin a day without already being depleted? 

Personally, I don’t know. And maybe it’s good that I don’t. Merely a taste of sweet relief would likely make the bitterness of pain all the more unbearable. 

If you know the life of daily, moment by moment, relentless physical suffering, you know it all too well. Everything has a cost. And it’s a cost few can see. You learn to smile through the stabbing torment of misfiring nerves. You sit in the stands and cheer for your child, despite the nausea sitting in your throat, and an eye on nearest the bathroom. You swallow your pride when you hear the familiar disappointment in your friend’s voices when you cancel at the last moment – again. You sit at the stove and stir with pure resolve, fighting for the last ounce of strength that you used up hours ago. 

Somehow, you just keep going. Sometimes forgetting it’s all you know, sometimes wondering how long until you are freed from this wretched frame you call home. 

For those doing this life without Jesus, I don’t know how you do it. I would have given up long ago. But I fight another day because I have been brought to the end of yourself and found the arms of Jesus at rock bottom.

Somewhere in the misery, in the debilitating weakness and sorrow and agony, Jesus becomes all the more real. He isn’t just the example to follow in a Sunday School story; he isn’t just there to slap a spiritual label on your self-absorbed life; and he isn’t there as a backup plan if life doesn’t pan out the way you want. 

He’s the man of compassion who searched for and healed the desperate bleeding (unclean) woman who merely had to touch the hem of her Savior’s robe for him to draw close (Matthew 9:20-22). He’s the man who wept with Mary in her grief, despite knowing he would raise her brother Lazarus back to life moments later (John 11:33-35). He’s the man who fiercely defended the blind man when the disciples accused him of suffering because of his own sin (John 9:1-4). He’s the tender Lord who pulled little children onto his lap and pursued those who society cast aside. And he’s the enduring Savior who remained on the cross for us, even as he was crushed by the unimaginable weight of the world’s sin and the full agony of pain and suffering that we experience in this world. 

Jesus isn’t naive to a life of pain. He was well-accustomed with grief. Because of that, he’s a perfect, ever-present Friend and Savior to those of us who are acutely aware of our need and the wretched pain of this world. 

I wonder, if our life in this world is predominately marked by pain, how much sweeter will Heaven be to us than if it had been marked by ease? Maybe the unveiled presence of Jesus will be all the more glorious in the light of eternity because we knew his palpable presence in the darkness. 

After all, Paul has told us, 

“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” – 2 Corinthians 4:16-18

I don’t know about you, but I am keenly aware of my “wasting away”. My broken body is a daily reminder that this world isn’t as it should be. But it’s also a tangible reminder that this isn’t my home. 

Truly, pain will bring the proudest to their knees in an instant. We are so much more fragile than we like to think we are. And yet, despite how much I despise the pain itself, I also believe it’s one of the only places we truly come to experience the depths of Jesus’s strength and presence of comfort. 

Pain may be a taste of the hell we’ve been spared from, but it’s also a taste of the heaven that’s coming when Jesus meets us in it.

And he promises he will. 

Home is around the corner, 

Sarah 

To read more of Sarah’s writings, you can pick up a copy of He Gives More Grace: 30 Reflections for the Ups and Downs of Motherhood, Hope When It Hurts: 30 Biblical Reflections to help you grasp God’s purpose in your suffering), Tears and Tossings (short evangelistic resource on how God carries our sorrows), or Together Through the Storms (for married couples navigating the trials of life). Lastly, you can now order Sarah’s Pilgrim’s Progress inspired children’s book based on the account of the Prodigal Son, titled “The Long Road Home” (Crossway).