Pain is usually view as something that is negative. Normally, people don't want to get sick. Mostly people will go to doctor when get sick to check what is happening and so that the disease can be treated. Even in prayer, we ask God to be merciful so that our sickness, or our brother, or our friend may be healed. I just saw a living testimony by a husband and wife named Paul and Margareth Brand which was uploaded on DVD. They are both burdened in the medical field, and involved in a medical Christian team.
One day, they were sent to become medical missionaries in a village in India. Arriving there, they saw that many residents there were affected by a very strange disease. They had never encountered the disease before. In short the disease is known as leprosy. People affected by this disease are often found with very sad conditions: no fingers, no feet, even dry watery eyes where people can no longer see, etc. Patients with this disease are not only under pressure from within but generally from outside.
If we look at ancient times, in the Bible it is recorded that people with leprosy are shunned. They can't get along with normal people. They live in separate areas, and they are considered unclean. This is the "pain" suffered by lepers. In his research, Dr. Paul Brand found that people with leprosy had sensory dysfunction of pain. For example, the ears of a person who has this disease can disappear the next day because when they sleep in a slum, there are rats that bite the ulcers in their ears, without them feeling pain. This is because they can't feel pain, they can't feel something is biting their ears. When they walk on the street without their shoes on, they can't even feel if there are shards piercing through their skin as they step on it, which in the end eventually the injured leg became ulcerated and rotted so that it was damaged. Likewise with the eyes, with the condition of their hands being damaged, they rub or even scratch their own eyes and even touch their corneas without them feeling the pain. This cause of damage to the limbs of the sufferer of this disease. Dr Paul Brand said something that is I think quite profound: "Thank God for the pain. If there's only one gift that I could give my leprosy patients, it would be the gift of pain.”
We often see the pain / suffering we receive as negative, but here we can see how important the pain is for people affected by leprosy. Here we can learn a few things about the importance of pain. Pain has the first role as a sensory warning in our body. When we feel pain, it is a sign that there is something wrong in our body that we need to take care of, or treat. If a disease is not known and suddenly we know it when it is already malignant, then it usually is very serious and can be critical. Likewise with the struggles of our lives, pain and suffering - these should remind us once again our condition: we live in this fallen world, we sin, and we are fragile. This should instead bring us back to God, it should make us rely more on God. God may use our suffering to remind us to come back to Him.
We can relate the story above to our spiritual leprosy. What does it mean? A person who has just killed, feels guilty inside, but by the time he does it again and again, that person already considers killing to be a normal thing, and may even feel at peace in his heart. He no longer feels the “pain” of doing sinful things. That is leprosy which is more dangerous than physical leprosy. "Leprosy" that leads man to eternal destruction. Let us not allowing ourselves to lose the feeling of "pain" when we sin, instead come back to God asking for help and forgiveness, give thanks when our lives face all the challenges, trials, struggles of life. Let us always pray that we may always be given the longing and the will to live in the fear of God.
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