I've been reading Philip Yancey's Where is God When it Hurts? The thing that has stood out the most to me lately is his talk about leprosy. I also have been reading in Leviticus and the past two days have been on the same topic. It talks about pain and how it serves us, without it we would have a huge void. It tells us when to slow down and when to stop. We utilize it every day. We take it for-granted especially when we go through something that is hard. God allows pain in our lives so that we can connect more closely with one another and Him.
The worst part about being a leper would not have been the loss of arms or ligaments. It was the inability to feel many sensations and express oneself. Till reading this book I hadn't realize what frustration it must be to be a leper. They can't express themselves in any way. They don't feel the pain but they must still feel that emotional sadness. The inability to connect with others. "Like muscles, our senses can atrophy."
We live in a society where I feel many people walk around as emotional lepers afraid or unable to communicate their feelings. We isolate ourselves, we justify consumerism and the collection of junk to feed our voids when relationship is the only true thing that satisfies. Technology connects but also destructs. We lose our reason, we worship ourselves instead of our creator forgetting the sacrifices He has made. We live in a dangerous age and my prayer is that the Lord spares us and we turn our hearts towards Him and away from this world. May I seek each day to bring a little bit of heaven to earth. Without pain there is no pleasure. Imagine not being able to experience both.
Philip Yancey quotes George Wald "We somehow hope to live full emotional lives when we have carefully expunged the sources of the deepest human emotions. When you have no experience of pain, it is rather hard to experience joy."
