God’s Perspective on Pain

God’s Perspective on Pain

After I received the email, I walked outside in the pulsing dark. I went halfway down the driveway and lay on the asphalt. I could feel the warmth, from the day’s relentless sun, radiating against my back. The night sky was cluttered with stars. A satellite winked in the unfathomable distance. I wanted to talk to God, but my chest was too heavy to speak.

That email, that devastating news, had tipped the scales in my balancing act between faith and fear. The request for prayer had come from the woman’s teenage daughter. Five weeks ago, she and I had sat in the children’s section of the library and talked about her favorite books. And now, she was facing the absolute worst fear a child can face—the possibility of losing her mother when she has already–emotionally, at least—lost so much. What unbearable ache.

This woman, facing such a battle, was one of the most instrumental people in my life during my husband’s medical journey. She had already fought cancer before I arrived at the church, and therefore, she wasn’t afraid to ask how we were doing or when the next scan would take place. I loved her for that. I loved her for that, and I loved her for her calm, maternal presence.

A few Sundays before we moved, our church met at a park. Fat clouds bobbed across the blue; the early June sky seemed to encompass all the shades at once. Cattails bent with the wind sweeping across the marshlands, and the earthen dam was an ethereal green. The small congregation decided to take a walk around the lake. I hadn’t packed proper shoes, so I discarded my pumps in the grass and walked barefoot in the path’s spring-softened mud.

This woman and I found ourselves walking side-by-side. I was honored by her presence. The cancer had diminished her lung capacity, so we slowed our strides to allow her to catch her breath. I asked how she was doing with her treatments, and she told me. I explained about my best friend’s journey (she’s over eight years cancer-free) and then added, vehemently, “I hate cancer.” I glanced over, unsure if I should’ve admitted such anger to a woman who had every right to be angry, and yet never seemed to exhibit anything of the sort.

But she said, “It’s okay to hate cancer.” She took a breath. “God hates it too.”

She began to tell me a story, which she said I—being a writer—might want to use one day. The story’s pace was slow and methodical. We took breaks to let her rest and to keep my four-year-old happy, but the story held my attention throughout.

The woman had been close friends with a bank president and his wife. One day, the doorbell rang in the house, and the wife went to open it. A man was delivering flowers, but after she received them, he forced his way inside and try to extort money from her husband by calling the bank and telling him his wife was being held hostage. The situation took a downward turn when the robber noticed the wife looking at his hand, which was severely maimed because of an explosion a few years before. He killed her, then, fearing she would be able to identify him.

I stared over at the woman as we walked, my heart pounding hard in my chest, though our pace remained slow. She said, “I went in that house, after it happened. Everything was dusted in black because they were looking for fingerprints. There were still dishes in the sink.”

She told me that, a few days later, she attended her murdered friend’s funeral. The pastor walked up to the pulpit and looked out over the grieving congregation, which included the deceased wife’s husband and their children. He said, vehemently, “God hates this.”

The woman glanced over at me again and smiled. Her cheeks were pink from the exertion. “God hates pain too,” she said.

I thought of that conversation as I lay on the driveway with the warm asphalt relaxing my back. I thought that God hates cancer. He hates a teenage girl having to call the church prayer chain and asking for a miracle for her mother. He hates prejudices, abuse, hunger, earthquakes, and floods. He is not the one who inflicts the pain; He is the one who yearns to draw us close as we journey through it. Still on the driveway, I stretched my arms up to the dark sky and breathed deep. To my left, a star streaked and fell, and my heart soared with the hope of the Redeemer, whose gentle presence had tipped the scales toward faith once again.

Have you ever wondered about God’s perspective on pain?