This last week we had a "substitute" speaker at church. Dale Henry is an outstanding speaker and motivator for corporations like Cisco, IBM, Procter and Gamble, Johnson and Johnson, and the list goes on.
But his message was different as he spoke of Job and about us having JOY even in trials. So Dale spoke of kidney stones and when he asked who has experienced them, my hand went up high. I have had three bouts with kidney stones and they all were about as bad as any pain could be. What starts out as a small pain in the lower back soon becomes a pain that had no end.
For me the pain was such that I vomited uncontrollably when there was nothing to vomit. So when I got to the emergency room they immediately gave me a shot and within minutes the pain became manageable. The problem was that I was in Atlanta for training at Home Depot and it was 3:30 in the morning. When I said that I wanted to go to have surgery in Knoxville, the physician said, we cannot release you to go home until the medication wears off. I said but won't the pain come back and the doctor said yes because the stone is nine millimeters in diameter and quite sharp. My thought while under drugs was, "9 millimeters is not much" only to find out later that it was over 1/3 inch in diameter.
I headed up I-75 to get me home. I made it about 20 miles and had to pull over. After vomiting and resting for the pain to go down, I’d drive another 20 miles and experience the cycle all over again. It took me five hours to get home which normally takes 2 ½ hours. We went straight to the hospital and the surgery was welcome relief.
Where is the joy in kidney stones? I could find no joy in any of the three expereinces except for understanding when someone tells of having a kidney stone. Job had lost everything and was in constant pain from his sores. Yet his best words are simply, “Human life is a struggle, isn’t it?” Job 7:1 (The Message)
Of all the frustration and hurt and loss, it boils down to the idea that Life is a Struggle!
In whatever happens to you that you consider miserable, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds . . . ”. (James 1:2) Understand that the creator of the Universe is in love with you and he can give you a testimony from those pains and trials. Read the last of Job (Job 42) and see the joy that was seen from just trusting the Lord in trails.