When I stub my toe, does Jesus feel the pain?

By Randy Knapp

A couple of months ago I was hiking on the Pacific Crest Trail and my feet were hurting. I had just summited Mt. McLoughlin a couple hours earlier, and I was on my way back to the trailhead. I had been on my feet for about seven hours. I’d hiked nine miles, ascended over four thousand feet to the summit, and then retraced every step back down the mountain. There was about a mile of trail left before I would get back to the car.

I didn’t want to complain too much, though. It had been a marvelous climb. I had felt energized the whole day. I was a bit tired, but it was the kind of fatigue brought on by great accomplishments.

I’d had an especially close conversation with Jesus during the climb. I felt His presence with me. We’d been discussing the meaning of His name, Emmanuel, “God with us.” I had asked Him to explain what it really meant to have God living inside of me.

I wasn’t paying much attention to the trail in front of me when I hit a protruding rock with the toe of my left boot. Pain shot through my already aching toes. It ricocheted through my foot, surged up my leg, and then jagged like lightning into every corner of the rest of my body. I stumbled and nearly fell. I would have hopped around on my right foot to give the injured foot a rest, but it already hurt too much to take the additional strain. The pain was elegant beyond words. It occupied my full attention. I howled.

In the midst of my tumult, an idea popped into my head and I started laughing out loud through the pain. I called out to Jesus, “If You really live inside of me, then You had to have felt that pain!”

The smiling silence replied, “That was nothing. I’ve felt worse pain than that.”

And I got it! I knew in that instant that His feet had felt more agony than I would experience in a lifetime, and yet He cared enough to share the pain of my stubbed toe. His response reassured me that He would be with me no matter what sensation I experienced. I knew that He would share all of my joy. He would calm any fears. He would comfort all pain. If He walked with me on the Pacific Crest Trail, He would journey with me anywhere else I would go.

David understood the personal presence of God. In Psalm 139 he wrote, “I can never escape from your spirit! I can never get away from your presence! If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the place of the dead, you are there. If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans, even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me.”

In the gospel of John, chapters 14 through 17, Jesus taught His disciples about the miracle of His personal indwelling through the power of the Holy Spirit. He said that when they finally understood what “God with us” really meant, their lives would be transformed in marvelous and powerful ways.

Jesus used a rock protruding from the Pacific Crest Trail to teach the same ideas to me.

Randy writes form Medford, Oregon. You can correspond with him at knappsnest@msn.com.