Emotional pain and emotional deadness

We all experience pain at some time in our lives.
Physical pain can often be helped by medication but emotional pain is much more difficult to deal with. There are times we wish we could completely escape from such grief and hurt. We may even read books, take course or set boundaries in an attempt to find ways to reduce or eliminate this dreadful pain. This is good and may be helpful but there are a few points we need to bear in mind.

Hot bottle rash in a person with chronic abdominal pain who found some relief from the application of heat. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The opposite to pain is not joy but emotional deadness. If we never experience pain and grief it will be because we are also unable to experience love and joy. As a wise person said, ‘Pain is the price we pay for caring.’

God does not promise to take away our pain. He promises to be with us, comfort us and give us peace in the midst of our pain (Phil. 4:6,7). He shares and feels our pain and who better to do so. He experienced unbelievable pain on our behalf as the price of His caring.

Alan Hermann

“6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to god. 7 and the peace of god which passes all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through christ jesus.” (Philippians 4:6-7 MKJV)

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Find also:

1. Meaning of life 
2. Suffering
3. Offer in our suffering
4. God helper and deliverer
5. God's instruction about joy and suffering
6. God's promises to us in our suffering
7. Suffering - through the apparent silence of God
8. Suffering continues
9. Suffering leading to joy
10. Surprised by time in joys & sufferings

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Illustration of the pain pathway in René Descartes' Traite de l'homme (Treatise of Man) 1664. The long fiber running from the foot to the cavity in the head is pulled by the heat and releases a fluid that makes the muscles contract. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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• How do we express pain?
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• Love Hurts...Literally!
• Cage Fight: Emotional Pain v. Physical Pain
• California Pain Network Launches Los Angeles Pain Management Website

Taking care of mother earth

Do we want to make the effort to treat the earth well, no matter what and where others might vandalize it?
Men manages to destroy lots of parts of his environment. Sometimes he does not seem to be aware that he destroys nature. If the earth is to be inevitably destroyed, like sin might destroy us, do we just let the earth go to its destruction?

Men has received the possibility to be master of this earth, meaning that he himself can take care of it. But it does not mean he has to be a dictator over it. We our selves have to take care in the first place of our selfs. It is a very difficult task to come to perfection, but that is what we should try to do. Even as we never quite reach perfection, that fact does not prevent us from talking about the high standard for us of God’s moral perspective.
We should know from the instructions given by God in His Word that God has a moral perspective. The idea of caring for one another and caring for our place on the earth moves us from a reward based faith to a place where we do good for good’s sake, or God’s sake.

Having a small position or a high place in our comunity we do have to take up our responsibility.

You can read how a Royal House tries to keep nature in good order:

Royals, mini busses and environment

As a Global Non-political group of individual Christians waiting for the return of the Lord Jesus Christ we want to take care of nature, the Creation of the Most High.

Dutch version / Nederlandse versie: Zorg dragen voor moeder natuur