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Pain and Gain

I have spoken with many people who are in different stages of loss. Some are dealing with financial loss. Others have lost dreams. Some have seen businesses they built over a lifetime collapse. Others are dealing with the loss of a loved one through death. Some parents are facing the loss of children through suicide. 

Each person has one thing in common, a theme that unites them: they all confess that in the midst of their great losses they have never felt more alive or closer to God. Like an unexpected, sharp, and jabbing pain that blows every substation in our central nervous system with the speed of a lightning bolt, loss has a way of letting us know that we’re still human and still very much alive.

When you think about it, many of the notable defining moments of your life occur in times of pain. C. S. Lewis said, “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciousness, but shouts in our pains. It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” 

I find it compelling how hard it is to forget what pains we had in a time of loss, yet how much harder still it is to remember what joys we had in a time of gain. The discomfort we endure in loss forms the costly pearls in our character. We have no victory crowns to show for bliss. Gain gets all the good press, but in the end it’s your loss you hold dear, since it is your best teacher.

Gain isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. That’s why the apostle Paul could say in today’s Scripture reading: “Indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ” (Phil. 3:8 NKJV).

Paul found the meaning of framing his losses in the right context. Compared to the depth of gaining Christ, any gain in this world, no matter how grand, was a loss. Maybe this is why Paul never feared bad news. Maybe it’s why his faith never crumbled under pressure.

What can you possibly take from a man who has nothing to lose?

How would it help you to frame your loss or suffering in the context of your place in Christ’s kingdom?