I have considerable pain today, from a hand injury involving several fingers, from sciatica, from a knee injury, and from chronic tendinitis in one foot.
Now, I am sharing this to show you how to use pain. God allows physical suffering. Sometimes, like today, when I have been doing some chores, to slow down, to reflect more.
Sometimes, it is to remind us of mortality and death.
Sometimes, we can offer pain up for others. Today, I am praying especially for Dan, Rys, Edward, and Susan, (not their real names). So, I can ask God to use the pain, (without any complaining on my part), as an offering for those people today.
Sometimes, all we can give to another is our suffering, not by uniting it with the suffering of Christ, which would be hubris, but by understanding that pain is already an invitation from God to enter into suffering. See the difference?
Do not waste suffering.
Do not waste existential suffering, either.
