Thoughts on Pain and Hurt

No one likes to talk about pain. Pain comes in all forms. There is emotional pain and physical pain. There is muscle pain and pain experienced when one breaks a bone. There is sadness and depression, which could be considered pain.There is the pain one experiences inside of love. There is pain in losing a job or being at fault in an accident. There is pain in disappointing a loved one; pain also comes from betrayal. Pain and hurt come when we fail in something or fail someone.


Pain and hurt are part of daily life, and no matter how much we try to avoid them, they are always there. This creates an environment open to both pain and hurt. There are many ways to hurt others,and it is a fairly easy thing to do... to hurt someone else.You don't have to be that intelligent or cunning to hurt others. You do not need a lot of money or possessions to hurt someone else. You just need a few simple traits to hurt others, and we all are in full possession of those traits. This is why Christ came as a servant; He was to be our example. His life was a life lived in service to others. He humbly submitted to others physically and emotionally because servant-hood is not of this world; it is from the world that awaits those of us in Christ. It takes divine intervention to think of others before thinking of yourself. The Holy Spirit has to be active and moving to consider others before considering yourself. It is not what we naturally do; it is that which is the most unnatural thing we do.We can hurt others all by ourselves, but to think of others over ourselves requires help, a lot of help.

When it comes to hurt and pain, the Christian response is suppose to be the one that provides the world a model. That is what Christ did in His time on this earth, provide a model and then, leave a helper. That helper is the Holy Spirit, and it is only through Him that we help anyone other than ourselves. Someone told me recently that how we deal with our own pain and the pain of our fellow Christians will reveal who we are to the world. Do we inflict pain? Or, do we provide relief of pain and hurt? Do we turn the other cheek or do we look to hit the cheek of our neighbor? What do we do with someone who is in pain? Those were hard questions for me to answer, and if you are reading this thinking of everyone else other than you, then, they will be hard questions for you to answer when the time comes for you to answer them, and that time will come, eventually. I will leave you with this.

In my mid-twenties, a younger cousin of mine died of cancer. This was at the height of my sycophantic stage of life so I did not go to his funeral because I was too busy, at least that is what I said. Truth be told, I was having too much fun and did not want that fun derailed for even a day. At that time, I new nothing of Christ and lived only for me. Today, that memory lives on inside of me to serve as a reminder of who I used to be, and what I looked like living according to the world. What do you do when you are hurt? Do you withdraw from those around you or do you run to them? Your answer will reveal your heart and the hearts of those around you as well.  Blessings!