The Pain of Gain

At Christmas, Calum and I, decided at the last minute to get Josiah a hoverboard. He still hadn't decided on a main present, and his letter to Santa had consisted of ridiculous suggestions or surprises. The hoverboard was all fun and games, until, a few days after christmas I fell off it and fractured my wrist. 😕

I'd never broken a bone until now. The whole process of casts and splints was entirely new to me. Thankfully, I only needed the cast for four weeks, and I was soon able to let my skin breath and scratch that unreachable itch. It was such a relief! The A&E doctor had said that usually a fracture takes 4-6 weeks to heal, so I was looking forward to getting back to normal pretty quickly. The only downfall was, I hadn't realised how weak and stiff my wrist would be, once the cast was off. It was going to take a few weeks of exercises, and stretches, to push my wrist, so that it could do the things that it used to be able to do.

I wasn't fully prepared for the pain these exercises brought. It wasn't quite like giving a muscle a good stretch at the end of a gym session, it was actually pretty sore and unpleasant. However, with time, I slowly regained some of the flexibility of my wrist. The pain was definitely necessary and worth the effort.

Despite all my best efforts at allowing my wrist to heal, the tendon in my thumb ruptured a couple of weeks ago, and I"ve lost a lot of the function in my thumb. Apparently, it can happen when the tendon in the thumb rubs back, and forth over the rough area of a healing fracture, who knew!! Now, I'm awaiting a date for surgery, to transplant another tendon into my thumb, to allow proper function of my hand. Again, I'm faced with another painful process which involves surgery, incisions in my hand and then 6 weeks of rest, until the graft has had a chance to heal. This will then be followed by hand therapy, in order to regain the use of my thumb. I can't say it's something I'm looking forward to, but I will be glad when it's over and done with.

I've been thinking a lot about this process of passing through pain in order to gain something. Before covid I used to be an active gym goer, and regularly pushed my body through pain in order to gain a better level of fitness. With my fracture, I was pushing through the pain so that I could gain back the flexibility. God willing in a few weeks, I'll be pushing through the surgery and post-op exercises, to gain the function of my hand.

However, more than that, I"ve been thinking of the agony and pain that Jesus endured at Calvary. It says in Isaiah 53 v 3 "He was despised and rejected - a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised and we did not care". v5 "But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed." v7 "He was oppressed and treated harshly, yet he never said a word. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter. And as a sheep is silent before the shearers, he did not open his mouth."

The bible says he was flogged with a lead-tipped whip, he was stripped naked, a crown of thorns was pressed into his head. He was ridiculed, spat on and beaten. He had great roman nails hammered through his hands and feet, and then as his body hung on the cross for all to see, his bones were all out of joint. His beard was yanked from his face and the bible says in Isaiah 52:14 "But many were amazed when they saw him. His face was so disfigured he seemed hardly human, and from his appearance, one would scarcely know he was a man."

What pain? What agony? The cruelty of man towards another? Worse than all that, Jesus knew this was going to happen to him. He knew exactly what pain and suffering he would have to endure, yet he still chose to come into this world to suffer and die on the cross. Not only did he suffer from the hands of men, but during the 3 hours of darkness on the cross, he suffered at the hands of God. God, who was his Father, punished him in those 3 hours for all the sin of the world. A perfect sinless man, became sin and endured the punishment for sin. It was so awful, God had to clothe the world in darkness, because it was far too much for human eyes to watch.

It all just sounds horrific. There are no real words to describe it. The horror, the excruciating agony. Was the pain and suffering meaningless? What was the point to all this? where is the gain that I've been talking about? Amazingly, there was a gain for Jesus on calvary, that gain was me. He gained me and I gained Him. How wonderful it is to know that Jesus thought gaining me, was worth all that pain and suffering. Gaining each and every christian that has ever lived was worthwhile to him.

Sin is a horrible, evil thing that lives in all of us. Sin stops us from being able to have a relationship with God and knowing Jesus. Sin destroys everything that it touches. But my sin is gone. Jesus bore the punishment for my sin that day on calvary and because of his sacrifice I now have a living relationship with God and him. Everyone that believes in him and asks God to forgive them, for their sins, they too can be part of Jesus' gain on calvary.

"Because of the joy awaiting him (a relationship with us) he endured the cross, disregarding it's shame." Hebrews 12:2