"Praise be to God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion
and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can
comfort those in any trouble, with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. 
For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ
our comfort overflows.” 

2 Corinthians 3-5

Paul Brandt has spent his life as a surgeon to those with leprosy.  He
has a special name for pain.  He calls it the gift that nobody wants.  In his book that goes by this title, he illustrates what it would be like if we lived without the gift of pain.  He describes a little girl name Tanya, who was born with a condition known informally as “Congenital Indifference to Pain”.  Her mother describes the first time she realized her daughter had no sense of pain:

I’ll never forget the first time I realized that she had a serious problem. 
Tanya was 17 or 18 months old.  Usually I kept her in the same room with me, but that day I left her alone in her playpen while I went to answer the phone.  She stayed quiet so I decided to begin dinner.  For a change she was playing happily by herself.  I could her laughing and cooing.  I smiled to myself, wondering what new mischief she’d got into.  A few minutes later I went into Tanya’s room and found her sitting on the floor of the playpen, finger painting red swirls on the white plastic sheet.  I didn’t grasp the situation at first, but when I got closer I screamed.  It was horrible.  The tip of Tanya’s finger was mangled and bleeding, and it was her own blood she was using to make those designs on the sheets.  She had bitten off the tip of her finger and was playing in her own blood.

Dr. Brandt says,

Her parent’s horror turned to despair as wounds mysteriously appeared on one of Tanya’s fingers after another.  By 11 years old Tanya had lost both legs to amputation and lost most of her fingers.  Her elbows were constantly dislocated.  She suffered the effects chronic sepsis from ulcers on her hands and amputation stumps.  Her tongue was lacerated and badly scarred from her nervous habit of chewing on it.  A monster, her father called her.  Tanya was no monster, only an extreme example – a human metaphor, really, - of
life without pain.

Brandt calls pain, the gift nobody wants.  He challenges us to look at pain as a signal that something is wrong, and without it we would destroy ourselves unknowingly.

Pain Can Warn Us of Danger:

We hate pain, especially in those we love. Yet without discomfort, the sick wouldn't go to a doctor. Worn-out bodies would get no rest.  Criminals wouldn't fear the law.  Children would laugh at correction.  Without pangs of conscience, the daily dissatisfaction of boredom,  or the empty longing for significance, people who are made to find satisfaction in an eternal Father would settle for far less.  The example of Solomon, lured by pleasure and taught by his pain, shows us that even the wisest among us tend to drift from good and from God until arrested by the resulting pain of their own shortsighted choices.

Suffering Comes With the Freedom To Choose:

Loving parents long to protect their children from unnecessary pain. But wise parents know the danger of over-protection. They know that the freedom to choose is at the heart of what it means to be human, and that a world without choice would be worse than a world without pain.  Worse yet would be a world populated by people who could make wrong choices without feeling any pain.  No one is more dangerous than the liar, thief, or killer who doesn't feel the harm he is doing to himself and to others.

Suffering Reveals What Is In Our Hearts:

Suffering often occurs at the hand of others. But it has a way of revealing what is in our own hearts. Capacities for love, mercy, anger, envy, and pride can lie dormant until awakened by circumstances. Strength and weakness of heart is found not when everything is going our way but when flames of suffering and temptation test the mettle of our character. As gold and silver are refined by fire, and as coal needs time and pressure to become a diamond, the human heart is revealed and developed by enduring the pressure and heat of time and circumstance.  Strength of character is shown not when all is well with our world but in the presence of human pain and suffering.

God Suffers With Us In Our Suffering:

No one has suffered more than our Father in heaven. No one has paid more dearly for the allowance of sin into the world. No one has so continuously grieved over the pain of a race gone bad. No one has suffered like the One who paid for our sin in the crucified body of His own Son. No one has suffered more than the One who, when He stretched out His arms and died, showed us how much He loved us. It is this God who, in drawing us to Himself, asks us to trust Him when we are suffering and when our own loved ones cry out in our presence

In Times Of Crisis, We Find One Another:

No one would choose pain and suffering. But when there is no choice, there remains some consolation. Natural disasters and times of crisis have a way of bringing us together. Hurricanes, fires, earthquakes, riots, illnesses, and accidents all have a way of bringing us to our senses. Suddenly we remember our own mortality and that people are more important than things. We remember that we do need one another and that, above all, we need God. Each time we discover God's comfort in our own suffering, our capacity to help others is increased.  This is what the apostle Paul had in mind when he wrote, "Praise be to God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble, with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.  For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows."

God Can Turn Suffering Around For Our Good:

This truth is best seen in the many examples of the Bible. Through Job's suffering we see a man who not only came to a deeper understanding of God but who also became a source of encouragement for people in every generation to follow.  Through the rejection, betrayal, enslavement, and wrongful imprisonment of a man named Joseph, we see someone who eventually was able to say to those who had hurt him, "You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good"  When everything in us screams at the heavens for allowing suffering, we have reason to look at the eternal outcome and joy of Jesus who in His own suffering on an executioner's cross cried, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"

Eternity:

If death is the end of everything, then a life filled with suffering isn't fair. But if the end of this life brings us to the threshold of eternity, then the most fortunate people in the universe are those who discover, through suffering, that this life is not all we have to live for. Those who find themselves and their eternal God through suffering have not wasted their pain. They have let their poverty, grief, and hunger drive them to the Lord of eternity. They are the ones who will discover to their own unending joy why Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"

There is no other comforter like our Lord Jesus Christ.  Philip Yancey, in his book “The Jesus I Never Knew” describes the extent to which God understands our troubles.  He understands them to the very end, even to the very end of our lives.  Yancey describes his friend, a doctor who works in a hospice – that is with people who are living out the last weeks or months of their lives.  The doctor said to him, “When my patients pray, they are talking to someone who has actually died – something that is not true of any other advisor, counselor or death expert.”  That is the degree to which our God understands us and is able to comfort us – he understands every trial, even the final trial – which is facing our own end.  Even in that our struggle is not a solitary one.

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.  These have come so that your faith --of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire --may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is
revealed.

1Pet. 1:6-7

Christians live, not for this age, but for the age to come.  Our unbelieving neighbors live for this world.  There is nothing beyond this present life with all its trials.  But we live for the age to come, the age that has already been inaugurated by Christ’s first coming, his death and resurrection.  This coming age overlaps with the present one.  Those who do not believe do not recognize this.  How strange it is to them that we are enabled to endure our troubles and our pain.  They do not have the hope that we claim.  But when we live in faith and obedience to God, that hope spills over from our own lives, through Christ, into theirs, and we pray, will open their eyes to the God who is waiting to comfort them, as he has comforted us and continues to comfort us until his return.

God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.  Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give away and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea. 

Psalm 46:1&2

Psalm 23

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures,

he leads me beside quiet waters,

he restores my soul.

He guides me in paths of righteousness

for his name's sake.

Even though I walk

through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil,

for you are with me;

your rod and your staff,

they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me

in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil;

my cup overflows.

Surely goodness and love will follow me

all the days of my life,

and I will dwell in the house of the Lord

forever.