What Pain Teaches You

I've been having all kinds of fun the past 4 weeks.  Saturday night, my kidneys decided shucking off one 7mm kidney stone wasn't enough.  I was driving my wife to her sister's house and halfway between Tyler and Cleburne in the middle of the night a second stone decides to shake itself loose.  I managed to make it as far as my in-law's house and they drove me on to the hospital in Cleburne. I felt like I was going to die before I got there. Worst kidney stone yet!

So now I've got a 9mm stone on the left side that wants to move and it's going to be back to the urologist to have it blown up.

There's nothing quite so amusing as having rocks blasted apart inside your kidneys, I'm here to tell you.

As I was riding the final bit to the hospital Saturday, I had a very intense conversation with God about Him cutting back on the pain a little.  I don't know whether the pain would have been worse had I not prayed.  I can hardly imagine it could have been worse, but you never know.

Thank God for pain medication and I mean that literally.  I don't know how people survived such things in the past. It would account for the shortened lifespans of our forebears I expect.

God says if we are truly His children, He will send us trials that will show that your faith is genuine. Peter (I Peter 1:7) described it as being "tested as fire tests and purifies gold".  It is a serious thing to take the name of Christ as a Christian.  It is NOT a social group, though many of us practice it as though it were.  If you are a Christian you may expect trials.  Some are about teaching you.  Some trials merely use you as a tool to accomplish God's will. Trials are not always primarily about you.  You may learn something from any tribulation, it is true, but sometimes, God places you somewhere or allows something to fall heavily on you in order to help someone else find his way to God.

And sometimes, trials happen to reveal to you that all is not as you think they are.  Sometimes they reveal to us that God is far more in control than we ever suspected.  I found that out when I lost one son.  I discovered he was, in fact, a finer young man than I had known.  Recently, I've found that my remaining son has strength and depth of character that I should have realized he had, but that in midst of my own personal trials, I had somehow missed.  I found that my daughter has wisdom far beyond her years and that my wife is a stronger soul than, even I had imagined.  I am blessed to have them all.

As the world winds down, Christians and Christian families will have to learn to hold together, despite everything the world throws at them. We will have to learn how to give without counting the cost.  We will have to learn to lift up our brothers in their hour of need and to not be too proud to allow others to lift us up in our own hour of trial.

We will need to learn to pray together, work together and to believe in each other no matter what the enemy throws at us.  May God go with each of you in your journey home.

Tom King