Philip Yancy compares life to a symphony. It's not just the bright, beautiful, high notes that make a symphony beautiful. It1s the dissonant chords, the deep, dark notes, and the long tiring passages that seem to have little movement that suddenly combine with everything else to make the total symphony beautiful. Our lives are like a symphony. When we trust God, our pain and suffering are only the early movement of a slow song, which God in his wisdom is pulling together into a beautiful symphony, which he is using to deepen you into a more beautiful person than you ever imagined.

We in this life are in process. We are not finished products. We are in the process of becoming what God, the great artist, has in mind for us to be. And if we yield ourselves to God, in the faith and conviction that he knows what he is doing (even when our feelings tell us that our suffering can not possibly be for any good), then God can do miraculous things with us. He can transform our agony into ecstasy.

This movement from agony to ecstasy, and the interrelationship between the two is a reality here on earth, within this life. But that is only a faint shadow of another movement from agony to ecstasy that one day we who are in Christ will experience, the movement from this life to the next.

That is the specific reference of Jesus in John 16. He says, 'So you have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.' Our whole life here is the birthpangs before we are born into the ecstasy of heaven, where there will be no pain, no hurt, no loneliness, no fear of rejection, no sense of failure and worthlessness, no guilt, no hatred, no regrets.

It's important to understand our pain is temporary, not to minimize our pain, but to put fences around it. As much as God can even use our pain in creative ways now, we still look forward to the day when there will be no more pain.

And that must control how we view the pain of life and also death, for life and death then become the painful process of birth into heaven. Philip Yancy expands on this metaphor of child-birth which Jesus uses. He says, 'Each of our individual deaths can be seen as a birth. Imagine what it would be like (to be born that is)...One day you feel a tug. The walls are falling in on you. Those soft cushions are now pulsing and beating against you, crushing you downwards, Your body is bent double, your limbs twisted and wrenched, You1re falling, upside down. For the first time in your life, you feel pain. You1re in a sea of roiling matter. There is more pressure, almost too intense to bear. Your head is squeezed flat, and you are pushed harder, harder into a dark tunnel. Oh the pain. Noise. More pressure. You hurt all over. You hear a groaning sound and an awful, sudden fear rushes in on you. It is happening - your world is collapsing. You are sure it1s the end. You see a piercing, blinding light. Cold, rough hands pull at you. A painful slap. Waaaahhhh! Congratulations, you have just been born.'

Our life and death are like that. On this end of the birth canal, it sometimes seems fierce, scary and full of pain. But we know that beyond the darkness and pain of this life and of death itself is a whole new world for us. And when we are up into it, our tears and hurts will be faint memories, as the joy of the mother who has forgotten her anguish.

We must never forget that our pain is temporary. The symphony will one day be complete! One day, every bruise, every cancer cell, every hurt and every tear will be set right. And all of our grim moments of hoping against hope will be rewarded. Our anguish will be smothered as we stand in the presence of God.

With us who in our suffering ask, 'Where is God when when it hurts?' God pleads, 'Let history finish! Let the symphony scratch out its mournful note of dichord before it bursts into song!' Believe! Hope against hope, every day of our lives, knowing that one day we will be complete. God will have finished his handiwork. And pain, instead of being a problem, will be no more than a flickering memory.