Living Homeward Through Pain

I am being hounded by episodes of pain that the doctors can’t figure out.

Every pending test is a slow bloom of hope, however frail until it blights. At home, the pain ambushes me at unpredictable intervals. In its wake creeps the silent suggestion that I may never again be healthy enough for the old rhythms. My dreams condense to a simple aspiration: I want only to be present as a wife and friend today and to move about as a mother for the next twelve hours until the little ones can gently and lovingly be put to bed.

But on one difficult Saturday, right as the pain in my middle squeezes and holds - my perspective shifts. Up to this point, I have been viewing myself as a figure on an island of pain, irrelevant to those who cannot share it . . . a dot floating anchorless in significance and time. All the guessing, hoping, and waiting for a resolution has taken place within the confines of my life—so much activity within, so little connection to anything without. As I consider the stories of believers throughout history, my mental range of sight widens to see above and outside that dot so that my life is no longer an isolated incident but one in a long thread of small but radiant existences stretching backward and forward through history - saints marching into the kingdom of God.

I think of the children, women, and men streaming into the kingdom so intently that it seems as if I could reach out and touch them as they pass, and the reality of what the Bible says becomes almost palpable. Its statements are nothing to be trifled with: the first will be last, and the last will be first (Matt. 19:30; Mark 10:31; Luke 13:30). Those whom we would deem most deserving of our pity now are those who will receive the greater measure of honor when the kingdom of God comes in fullness. God “does not forget the cry of the afflicted” (Ps. 9:12); He is the unfailing champion of the fatherless, the widow, and the sojourner (Ps. 68:5; Ps. 146:9; Deut. 10:17–18), the bankrupt in spirit (Matt. 5:3).

If the upside-down honor of the kingdom proves true, the people I know who are suffering greatly will be miles upon miles ahead of me if the saints ever do “go marching” in a single procession. Their stories, in many ways, have spelled out to me the compassion, mercy, and faithfulness of God in situations where I did not think His presence could be evident. They will be among the company who declare that the love they have received from Him is worthy of their all.

This view sets my pain in context over decades, centuries, and eons. I do not have control over the world events I will live through or the gauntlets I will have to run, but as these Christ followers scattered throughout the ages, I have this day’s chance to be faithful. The days of mortals are but “a few handbreadths” (Ps. 39:5), but what we do here will matter for eternity. This is the prelude, and within it ring the themes of the full-blown beauty of the restoration.