Over time, although I never wanted to feel pain, I came to see that it was doing much good in me. I became much more aware of how everything meaningful in life rides on God. I became much more dependent on him. When people who knew me well would pause to lay hands on me and pray for me, it was like receiving life. Certain temptations involving success and achievement became much less seductive; spiritual reality got clearer.
The ball of pain gradually got smaller. It still revisits me from time to time. I never want it. But in a strange way I realize that it brings gifts from God that nothing else does.
I know, of course, that countless people have suffered infinitely more pain than I. And I don't believe God is the kind of person who delights in inflicting painful little moral object lessons on helpless mortals. But in my own life, at least, there is this strange duality about pain. It can cause me to wonder where God is, as nothing else can. And it can open me up to my dependence on his presence as nothing else can.
The Gift of Complaining
Job spends most of the book complaining to God. In the wintry books of the Bible, mostly people complain. There is a fascinating paradox in the book of Psalms. The Hebrew name for the psalms was tehillim — "praises."
Scholars sort out the psalms in different categories: psalms of thanksgiving; wisdom psalms, enthronement psalms. But by far the most common kind of psalm is called the lament — or complaint.
You gave us up to be devoured like sheep and have scattered us among the nations.
You sold your people for a pittance, gaining nothing from their sale . . .
All this happened to us, though we had not forgotten you or been false to your covenant . . .
Israelites devoted more psalms to complaining than any other single category. This may be good news for you. Maybe you already know how to complain or would be willing to learn. Maybe complaining is your spiritual gift.
Old Testament scholar Ellen Davis has written that in the ancient world these complaint prayers are without parallel in other religions. In no other culture did people pray to their god in language that was so frank and even rude:
You crushed us and made us a haunt for jackals . . .
Awake, O Lord! Why do you sleep? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever.
Why do you hide your face and forget our misery and oppression? . . .
How long, O LORD, how long?
People of other ancient religions prayed. They made requests, offered worship, even cursed their enemies. Only Israel, in all the ancient world, prayed this kind of complaint prayers.
For good reason, because only Israel in all the ancient world believed that the great God who made the heavens and the earth cares that we are in pain and he can be expected to do something about it.
This is what makes these prayers so powerful — and an important part of our spiritual life. When we are passionately honest with God, when we are not indulging in self-pity or martyrdom but are genuinely opening ourselves up to God, when we complain in hope that God can still be trusted — then we are asking God to create the kind of condition in our heart that will make resting in his presence possible again. And God will come. But he may come in unexpected ways.
Lewis Smedes was a teacher of mine in seminary, one of the best writers and preachers I have ever known. Even though he was brilliant and accomplished and devoted to God, he suffered from a sense of inadequacy that at times grew into deep depression. At one point in his life he stopped preaching because he felt unqualified. God came to him through two avenues. One was a three-week experience of utter solitude, where he heard God promise to hold him up so vividly that, as he put it, he felt lifted from a black pit straight up into joy. The other avenue he describes this way:
