Have you ever suffered intense physical pain? Perhaps you’ve been injured while playing sports, or you battle a lifelong disease. Maybe you’ve always been healthy, but are grieving the loss of a loved one or a close friend. If so you might empathize with Cyra, the heroine in Veronica Roth’s Carve the Mark. Her story illustrates an important truth—pain often serves a purpose, but we don’t have to suffer alone.
Like others in her world, Cyra has a currentgift, a special manifestation of the mysterious force that flows through her universe. Her particular gift comes with a very significant cost. She absorbs and experiences excruciating pain through the current that races through it. Early in her childhood, her tyrannical father and her brother, next in line for the throne, learned to use Cyra as their most powerful weapon. With a touch, she can force the immense pain she feels into another person. Her victims suffer pain to the point that they go mad or die.
Considering the extreme measure of her physical pain and the emotional wreckage caused by her kills, it’s no wonder Cyra spends much of her time behind her closed door—alone, bitter, and broken. Racked with guilt, she silently agrees with everyone who considers her a monster.
Then she meets Akos. Kidnapped from enemy territory, his destiny is to serve her family. Akos also has a gift. He can interrupt the current, and with a touch, he brings Cyra relief, without the usual horrible side effects.
Throughout the story the two form an unlikely friendship and remind us why, in the midst of our pain, we need others. Whether by offering a remedy or encouragement, friends help ease the pain in our lives, even if they cannot take it away completely like Akos did for Cyra.
“As I reached for Akos, the darkness spread beneath my skin like spilled ink. I touched my hand to his and waited for his scream.
Instead, all the currentshadows ran backward and disappeared. And with them went my pain.”
Veronica Roth, Carve the Mark (p. 83).
There is one person who also had Akos’s miraculous ability to end suffering with a touch. Jesus.
Mark 5:24b-29 tells the story of a woman who suffered for many years. When Jesus visited her neighborhood, a huge crowd of people surrounded him. The woman didn’t have the opportunity to introduce herself or ask Jesus to heal her. Instead, she pushed her way through the bustling crowd, reaching her arms out to him. As Jesus passed by, she couldn't grab ahold of him, but his cloak brushed against her outstretched fingertips. It was enough. Instantly, her debilitating symptoms stopped.
Unlike Jesus’s other healing miracles, this one was initiated by the healed, rather than the healer. The bible tells us when the woman reached for Jesus, she did so, believing that if she only touched him, she would be healed. And she was right. While others showed faith in Christ after he healed them, this woman demonstrated faith in him before her suffering ended.
How different would our painful experiences be if we just reached for Christ in the midst of our suffering? He’s always there, far closer than an armlength away, but when the pain comes in waves, it disorients and distracts us. We can lose sight of his presence and our need of his help.
In the midst of the hard times, have you ever felt God wasn’t there for you, or worse, he was punishing you? If so, you’re not alone. Often, pain is an obstacle to our relationship with God, something that puts distance between us and him. Whenever we credit our suffering to God’s apathy or wrath, we're likely to doubt his goodness and withdraw, missing our chance to reach for his healing touch.
In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis wrote, “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” Our Lord knows that more than physical cures, we need a complete spiritual remedy. Pain reminds us that things are not as they should be. As Lewis explained, pain “shatters the illusion that what we have, whether good or bad in itself, is our own and enough for us.”
Pain teaches us to reach for our Lord Jesus, like Cyra reached for Akos.
When we do, we can experience healing, inside and out. If the Lord uses our physical infirmities to keep us close to him and we depend on His mercies, He will use them for good in our lives.
Take the apostle Paul, for example. He had a thorn in the flesh, and despite many prayers, the Lord did not heal it; however, because Paul never loosened his grip on Christ, he was able to say, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Corinthians 12:8-10.
Prayer: Heavenly Lord, you know my weaknesses, my hurts, and the pain I carry. And though you are all I need, I forget to reach out to you in the midst of my hardships. Please Lord, draw close to me. Remind me of your presence and pull me into your tender care. Take away my pain the way only you can. But if its meant to keep me close to you, then Gracious Lord, be my strength, all to your glory.
In Jesus's name I pray, Amen.
Additional recommended readings:
The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis