“Don’t Waste the Pain“, by Rev. Angela Martin

My brother, Eddie, is a physical therapist in the Montgomery area. For several years, he served as a trainer for one of the area football teams. During one particular game, one of the boys got hit hard. Eddie ran out onto the field and as he did so, he noticed the boy was not moving at all. As he knelt beside the kid he realized that his eyes were open. Eddie asked him if he thought he could move his right arm. The boy said yes. Eddie said, “Well move it, then, so that your momma up in the stands knows you’re ok!” The player eventually got up and returned to the game.

Pain, physical and emotional, and difficult times often stun us to the point of inaction. We are afraid of making things worse or we don’t know how to make it back to the life we had before the struggle. Sometimes the suffering just wears us down and we feel stuck. But Paul tells us not to waste the pain. In fact, he says to rejoice in our suffering because suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope. Rejoicing in our suffering is like raising our hand and waving at God to let him know we’ll be alright and we’ll be faithful and we know without a doubt that God will remain faithful to us. Because of our hope in God we can find our way back to the game of life.

~Angela

The Word

Romans 5:1-5

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

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