It is safe to say that no one likes pain. In fact, when we experience pain, most of us do all we can to remedy it. In this episode of the Things Above podcast, James Bryan Smith says that, while pain is not something anyone wants, pain is a necessary part of life.

Pain alerts us to something that is wrong and something that needs to be healed. This is true for us physically, emotionally and spiritually. Another benefit of pain is that it can lead to the development of our character. C.S. Lewis once wrote, “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

Following Dallas Willard’s emotional funeral, Jim recalls reading a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer about the pain of grief that we feel for the loss of those we love and the desire for it to go away. But Bonhoeffer counsels against making the pain go away. He writes, “Nothing can make up for the absence of someone we love, and it would be wrong to try and find a substitute; we must simply hold out and see it through. That sounds very hard at first, but at the same time, it is a great consolation, for the gap, as long as it remains unfilled, preserves the bond between us. It is nonsense to say that God fills the gap; God does not fill it, but on the contrary, God keeps it empty and so helps us to keep alive our former communion with each other, even at the cost of great pain.”

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