A King Proximate To Pain

Pain and isolation are strange bedfellows.

As pain levels intensify, so does my sense of isolation. As the ache sets in, so does loneliness. I wake in the night with torment whispering sweet nothings in my ear, “No one understands. No one feels. No one knows. You’re alone.”

It’s a lie, of course. 

But pain is a practiced deceiver. Pain has a subtle tongue, twisting reality and distorting truth, often beyond recognition. Pain’s devious voice throbs in our ear, amplifying our fears, projecting our insecurities, and magnifying our fallen nature. Pain charts a course that will run the ship of faith aground; “I am alone” soon becomes “God has abandoned me”, and pain cheers in victory.

It’s a lie, of course.

Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. - Isaiah 53:11

The suffering servant, the one who bears our sorrows, the one acquainted with grief, mocked, stripped, flogged, and scorned; the King who was for a little while made lower than the angels, crushed, rejected, and abandoned—out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied.

The same one who is acquainted with grief is the very one who is near to the broken-hearted, will not break off a bruised reed, and sits with the poor is spirit.

Hasten to me, O God!

We have a King proximate to pain. He does not dwell in lofty towers of isolation, shielded from the griefs of this world, instead, he walks these trails of suffering and binds the wounded he finds fallen on the wayside. The blind who cry from the deceived darkness of agony, “Son of David, have mercy on me”, he hears and draws near. The slaves who cry out in their bondage, “If you are willing”, he hears, and he knows.

But I am poor and needy; hasten to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer; O LORD, do not delay! - Psalm 70:5