Ouch!

Pain is a recurring theme in my life...I've learned though that it isn't all bad. Most of the time people naturally think of pain as being a bad thing, and then try to convince themselves of the opposite with slogans like "no pain, no gain" or "pain is weakness leaving the body." Pain can be a good thing or a bad thing. Here are some examples in my life:

- I'm training for my next bike race and as I sprint for the twentieth time in an hour my legs are burning like crazy, but that's a good thing because it means I'm strengthening my muscles.

- Now I'm out training again, but this time it's in the middle of the winter and my hands and feet hurt like crazy because of the numbness, which could potentially turn into frostbite...that's bad pain.

So what is pain? Pain is a catalyst for change. I think I'm sounding like a certain politician right now...anyways. Catalyst is an over used and under-understood word. Originally a scientific term it's used in chemistry to describe something that speeds up a reaction between substances. And a reaction is...believe it or not...where two or more substances react to form different substances. In other words a catalyst speeds up stuff changing. Which is what pain does also. So lets go back to the real life examples:

- The pain in my legs from exercise signals that my body is changing...specifically my legs are getting stronger.

-The pain in my hands and feet tells me that my digits are turning into ice cubes and therefore I need to change the temperature of their surroundings before they turn blue and fall off.

Now the whole point of me talking about this is this - When we experience pain rather than just moaning and groaning about how miserable it is, we need to look for what reason God is causing this pain. Does he want us to go inside and warm up our toes or does the pain mean we need to make something right with a friend. Lately I've been limping around and whining about the pain from my last bike race where I got in a wreck...I think God's wanting to change my attitude toward pain and maybe get a little better with my bike racing skills.