Emotions: Hurt

By: Nathan Hood

Scripture: Psalm 42

We tend to obsess over finding a cure for pain.  There has to be a way to cease this infernal hurt.  There has to be a way to never feel this way again.  We medicate.  We labor.  We study so we might be able to explain away the pain but still, it hurts.  Our bodies are failing us.  We feel so young in our hearts but our knees and shoulders ache whenever we do anything.  We look around and see people unable to eat, people screaming and hating each other, old men molesting young children.  It really hurts.

St. Augustine is attributed with coining the latin phrase, “Felix culpa” which is often translated to mean, “happy fault” or “fortunate fall”.  It is the idea that “God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.”  Perhaps this is true.  Or perhaps God did not judge it better for evil to exist, but was so resolute in His decision to let us decide that He did not interfere when the pain was first introduced.  Perhaps it hurt Him to see it happen.  A man can sit and tussle in his mind forever.  But, the fact of the matter is: it hurts.

The Bible tells us and Pastor Barry reminded us in His sermon on “Hurt” that “…we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.  Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”  I do not know much.  But I do know that hope in God is good.  I know that He is good and that to put our trust in Him is right.  So, if suffering eventually puts our hope in Him, we can thank God for it.  Unfortunately, that does not make it not hurt.

All of our life, we should pursue a way to feed the hungry, help the hurting and console the brokenhearted.  These are all affirmed by scripture and encouraged.  We should try to cure the pain though we can be pretty sure it is not going anywhere as long as we are earthbound.  Hurt is the disease and it truly seems that as long as we are here on earth, we will be treating symptoms.  We know an eternal cure which is faith in Jesus Christ but here and now, there will be hurt.  But God assures us a way to navigate it.  He assures us that He will bring good out of it.  It is going to hurt.  Our sweet savior carried the same hurt that we do.  How sweet it is to have something in common with him.  But even that hurts to say.  Every time it hurts, our hope should grow and we should proclaim that hope here on earth.  We keep walking, we keep hurting, and we keep hoping.

The Cure for Pain - Jon Foreman
I'm not sure why it always goes downhill

Why broken cisterns never could stay filled

I've spent ten years singing gravity away

But the water keeps on falling from the sky

And here tonight, while the stars are blacking out

With every hope and dream I've ever had in doubt

I've spent ten years trying to sing these doubts away

But the water keeps on falling from my eyes

And heaven knows, heaven knows

I tried to find a cure for the pain

Oh my Lord, to suffer like You do

It would be a lie to run away

So blood is fire pulsing through our veins

We're either riders, or fools behind the reins

I've spent ten years trying to sing it all away

But the water keeps on falling from my tries

And heaven knows, heaven knows

I tried to find a cure for the pain

Oh my Lord, to suffer like You do

It would be a lie to run away