The theme of progress through pain has been rumbling around in my heart lately. It all started to unfold when I used it as a sign off for a work project the other day…and BTW that project is about to kill me. In that magical moment I started to think about how progress through pain applies to my life and the stories of those that I love.
One very dear friend of mine in particular has been battling depression and several other very painful medical issues for the last few years, yes I said years. I don’t mean pain like, “ooh ouch I scraped my knee,” she has been suffering without relief and yet through it I hear her growing closer and deeper to God in ways that I’ve never seen in her life before and it makes me think, now that’s serious progress through pain. Another childhood friend of mine is in the process of coming into relationship with Christ while facing the pain of sexual abuse from her past and this I think is the ultimate progress. And as I think of my own journey the things that have been the most painful God has used to bring me to a better place in Him if in the midst of the pain I will draw close to Him. Hardening my heart is a choice I’ve come to realize.
Good friends of mine have a beautiful dining room table that has an amazing knot in the middle of the wood, which apparently is a scar from some massive infection. Without that knot, the table wouldn’t be special. The knot gives the table a beautiful element of character and makes it a very valuable work of art. The furniture maker found that scar and turned into something beautiful. In a similar way God has demonstrated to me that if I yield painful things to him, He turns them into something beautiful that He will then use to help others.
Joseph’s life is an example of someone who did not allow the pain he lived to cause him to withdraw when he could’ve. He was betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, falsely accused, unjustly sent to jail, forgotten by those he helped and yet he was not consumed by the pain he’d been through. The words he shared with his brothers in Genesis 50 ring through my heart often, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring it about for many people." Joseph’s life reminds me how God will take the snarly, ugly things and turn them around so He can use them for the better in our lives and for the better of others.
I wonder what pain God might be asking you to give to him; that scar, that infection, the thing that you don’t want to face that He would like to help you through and bring you to a better place. Like Joseph, we have the same access to the healing power of the one who makes things right so that we can say with confidence, “I am in the place of God and these things that are ugly are now being used for good!”
Going green!
Ginger Price
