Skip to main content

The Necessity of Pain

The keeper jabbed his finger at the vellum. “Let her heart be a sign of that promise. You will see, you who have life and aren't grateful; you who speak to an old man who would give his head to see a single day of the life you now have.”
“Keep your words. This pain is no life.”
“You only feel pain because you’re alive, boy!” the keeper thundered. “This is the mystery of it. Life is lived on the ragged edge of that cliff. Fall off and you might die, but run from it and you are already dead!”
“Then I would rather be dead!”
“And Avra’s death will have been in vain. The world fled the precipice of life once. It stripped us all of humanity and established its Order of death. Now you speak like those who conspired to kill every living soul.”
From Forbidden by Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee. It is the first of the trilogy Book of Mortals series. I had read this book before but thought I should read it again before turning to the next instalment. It is the challenge of trilogies that one usually forgets what was read before the next instalment comes out! Forbidden transports the reader 500 years in the future to a world where the only emotion people have is fear.  Dekker and Lee do a great job to build a compelling story that keeps you on the edge and along the way offers challenging thoughts about the nature of life.

The quote above exemplifies the many insightful exchanges that are found within the book. It  reminds us of a truth we so often take for granted : in a fallen world pain is necessary for living. It is mark of being alive. Yes, there are many moments when we wish for the opposite. When the pain appears overwhelming as is the case in the above exchange when Rom painfully loses Avra and can't seem to contain the loss. But as the Keeper reminds him, at the end of day pain marks us out as those who belong to the land of the living. And of course at the deeper level we should add that it reminds us that all is not as it should be! We are not built for pain. It makes us long for a better world to come where there will be no pain or nor tears. When pain is no longer necessary. A world too glorious to imagine! 

Copyright © Chola Mukanga 2013
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Incarnation and Modernity

[The Bible] resituate modernity's prejudices within a wider context from which they were originally wrenched, showing them to be reductive heresies of a more complex biblical reality. So whereas modernity privileges an unchanging a-historicity, in the incarnation God enters history at a particular moment to gather a people to be with him not in a Greck eternity of unchanging timelessness, but in a biblical eternity of never-ending and ever-renewed intimacy and relational richness. Whereas modernity subordinates the particular to the universal, the Bible perfectly marries the universal "image of the invisible God" together with a particular first-century Palestinian Jewish man. Whereas modernity seeks the abstract over the material and finds itself painfully akimbo between the twin idols of materialism and immaterialism, in the same gesture the incarnate Christ validates material reality and prevents his followers from ever worshipping it. Finally, whereas modernity secks ...
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →

Do Not Be Anxious

Do not be troubled if you are poor - Christ Himself had no place to lay His head. Do not let the prospect of future hard times make you anxious about how you will endure, for "you will not be ashamed in evil days, and in times of famine you will be satisfied." God has said (Psalm 37:19) therefore, you must believe it. Do not be overly concerned with securing provisions for old age, for by all appearances, you may not live to see it. It is more than likely that you will reach your journey’s end sooner than expected. Your body is frail - it is already declining, greeting decay as its mother before it has even fully entered the hall of this world. The supports of your earthly tent are being loosened little by little. Take courage, O my soul, for soon the devil, the world, and the flesh will be crushed beneath your feet, and you will be welcomed into eternal mansions.   But even if the Lord prolongs your days to old age, He who brought you forth from your mother's womb will n...
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →

You Are A Pilgrim

Remember the brevity and uncertainty of your time. You are a tenant in the world and you do not know how soon you may have to leave. You can take nothing with you. Therefore, having food and clothing (which the Lord does not allow you to lack), be content with them (1 Timothy 6:7-8). You are a stranger on this earth, going home to your Father's house, where the things of this world will no longer be needed. Why, then, O my soul, should you desire more than what will carry you to the end of your journey? Will you set up camp on this side of the Jordan and settle here? Are you saying, "It is good for me to stay here"? Are you so satisfied with what the world is offering that you no longer long for home? No, no! Well then, O my soul, gird up the loins of your mind! You are heading home, and your Father urges you to run and make haste. Go, then, and carry no burden that might slow you down, lest it hinder your journey, and the doors close before you reach home—leaving you out...
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →