Our natural inclination to pain is of course to avoid it, get rid of it, or numb it out. God allows pain with a purpose. In fact, our suffering is a sign of His love. There's a protecting and correcting purpose in it. If we didn't feel pain, we wouldn't know something is wrong and wouldn't seek an answer to repair it. Pain is the signal that something needs to be fixed. It unifies the whole body. You can tell the health of a body by its reaction to pain. If the body doesn't react to pain, something there is dreadfully wrong. What does that say about the church? It's pain that unifies us as a church too. Scripture says when one member suffers, every member suffers with it [1 Corinthians 12:26]. We are drawn together by suffering. You can tell the health of a church by the way it responds to the hurting, helpless or homeless, the broken, bruised, battered, bleeding, and impoverished. The body is a healthy body when it responds to pain.