Where is the hope when all is pain?

Photo by Zhifei Zhou on Unsplash

THOSE who have borne pain begin to bear others’ pain. Cause and effect locates the bearer in a position where others’ pain irritates their own pain. It is why healing is so necessary.

Healing is heartfelt acceptance
never a thing we can do for ourselves.

If there is no healing, pain is simply too much to bear, and trauma re-incises old wounds, and festering of character and spirit takes place. But courage is mere choice and opportunity away. Hence, hope.

Pain forces us toward or away from hope, and the latter only because we gave up hope of finding it. The former is pain’s objective — to locate hope and reconcile who we are amid pain, and who we are to be post pain.

Wherever we encounter people of the latter school, those founded on despair, insight may give us the gift of seeing the sickness emanate from within them through varying forms and degrees of cynicism and helplessness that highlights they are fugitives of blessedness. They never hoped to be that way. Nobody ever does. And there are still so many individuals and groups for which pain doubles and trebles. A world where despair overwhelms.

But so too does blessing multiply.
It’s why healing is so important. Hope is central.

And yet, the hopeful former ones, who sought hope and promptly found it, can barely understand the latter’s affliction. Even less can those see who have never been afflicted. And there is no empathy possible in those who think they have suffered but indicate from the way they live that they have not.

Agree with what I write here or not, we have a problem in this world, and God gives us the want to bring His hope to all. But we cannot help unless we agree the aggrieved have cause. Their cause is not easily understood, and we can only help if we understand. It takes time and the humility borne of sacrifice to overcome ignorance.

Sometimes understanding is knowing
and accepting we don’t understand.

Sometimes the hope people seek amid their pain propels them into a deeper nuance of pain. There is courage needed to endure in the quest for hope. But hope will never disappoint us. It is worth every openhearted query. Yet we all need to be reminded through encouragement.

Pain causes us to stretch desperately toward hope, and where there is hope pain has meaning.

This article is not intended to heal. It’s merely an encouragement to keep searching and exploring.

Here are Jesus’ words from Matthew 7:7-8 (NLT):

“Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”

Healing is not an overnight process. But hope will hold us afloat in the meantime. There is one thing to do then: hope.