Come, sit, and enjoy a cup of tea or coffee in the comfort of the Lord:
"Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice." Ephesians 4:31
"A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth." Isaiah 42:3
To what end is pain? I do not clearly know. But I have noticed that when one who has not suffered draws near to one in pain there is rarely much power to help. There is not the understanding that leaves the suffering things comforted, though perhaps not a word was spoken. I have wondered if it can be the same in the sphere of prayer.
Does pain accepted and endured give some quality that would otherwise be lacking in prayer? Does it create sympathy which can lay itself alongside the need, feeling it as though it were personal, so that it is possible to do just what the writer of Hebrews meant when he said, "Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body" (Hebrews 13:3)?
"A bruised reed shall he not break" (Isaiah 42:3). The poorest shepherd boy on our South Indian hills is careful to choose, for the making of his flute, a reed that is straight and fine and quite unbruised. But our heavenly Shepherd often takes the broken and the bruised, and of such He makes His flutes.
