Geeky Garage

How many times in our lives have we complained about the problem of pain.. or sometimes known also as suffering?

Be it to our friends, loved ones or even to God (if one believes there's a God).

And...

How many times in our lives have we wished "if only I can live without pain!". How easy our lives would be?

I would like to share something I learnt today that hopefully can change our minds, even a little bit, about this "pain" problem.

Have you ever seen someone with leper before? In Indonesia we called it penyakit kusta.

I saw people with leprosy since I was a child. They were the ones who begged for money outside schools, outside the shopping malls and... maybe almost everywhere near traffic lights where cars would stop.

Have you ever thought why such terrible deformation of their limbs can happen?

Very little was known about the true cause of leprosy deformities. It was generally believed that the hands and feet of infected people simply disintegrated or rotted away as a direct result of the disease

Dr. Paul Brand

However, what Dr. Paul Brand discovered later on is this:

He pioneered the startling idea that the loss of fingers and toes in leprosy was due entirely to infection and was thus preventable. Because leprosy attacks chiefly the nervous system, resultant tissue abuse occurs because the patient loses the warnings of pain – not because of inherent decay brought on by the disease.

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Paul Brand discovered the gift of pain, claiming that because leprosy destroyed the sensation of pain in affected parts of the body, pain-deprived people inadvertently injured and destroyed themselves.

On one ocassion, he even mentioned that if only he could give the gift of pain to those leprosy affected people, maybe things will not turn out so bad for them.

Eventually, it was those pains on our skins, felt by our nerves that tell us we should avoid putting our hands into boiling water, or slamming our hands onto a durian skin. Physically, we should be very thankful for those pain sensors... that have saved the shape of our fingers, toes, limbs, everything the way they are.

How about those "pain" in our lives, emotionally, spiritually, or whatever-ly?

Isn't it just necessary? Do we really wish to be that emotion-less? Let us all think again and be thankful for however we are created.

Thanks be to God who has made us the way we are.

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
Psalm 139:13-14