Heavenly Love, Heavenly Pain

If angles have a heart like Lucifer’s that can become proud, and if angels have a heart that can love, they their heart must be capable to feel pain as well.


At times we might think of Earth as the “black spot” of the universe, tarnished by sin and boiling with suffering. After all, Adam and Eve are the only two creatures at the head of a race that has been utterly pulled down by transgression.
It is a much experienced reality that our globe is howling as suffering breaks into our hearts in an indomitable attempt to clutch them completely. The pain that you, or people around you experience may overshadow a genuine attempt to make sense of a perfect and happy place somewhere up there. The discrepancy between that place we call heaven and the world into which we came into being without personal choice may seem inequitable.

But is suffering the condition of the sinful human creatures exclusively?

Ellen White offers valuable insight that reveal the kind of suffering holy beings experienced:

“The news of man's fall spread through heaven. Every harp was hushed. The angels cast their crowns from their heads in sorrow. All heaven was in agitation. A counsel was held to decide what must be done with the guilty pair. The angels feared that they would put forth the hand, and eat of the tree of life, and be immortal sinners.”

And again: “Sorrow filled heaven, as it was realized that man was lost, and that world which God had created was to be filled with mortals doomed to misery, sickness, and death, and there was no way of escape for the offender. {…} The anxiety of the angels seemed to be intense while Jesus was communing with His Father.”

Thus, unfallen holy angels experienced:
• Sorrow
• Agitation
• Fear
• Anxiety
If the angels felt sorrow merely at realizing the condition of the fallen human race, I would imagine that as they witnessed the unprecedented condition of misery and decadence, their sorrow persisted at least, if not increased.
The holy angels’ suffering is two-folded:
1. First, because they’ve experienced war and separation before we did, when Lucifer rebelled and, along with his followers, lost his home.
2. Secondly, because they have experienced distress when Adam and Eve fell.

Therefore, when you think of the heavenly angels ministering to you, as the Bible records them to be doing in Hebrews 1:14 (Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation? - KJV), you can be assured that they are able to empathize with you! And if you still need another trust-building brick, here is another insightful quotation: “Angels were so interested for man’s salvation that there could be found among them those who would yield their glory and give their life for perishing man.”

At times it might be comforting to contemplate on the fact that angles feel our pain and suffer with us; that the unfairness of being born without choice on a sinful planet dissolves into such an extraordinary proof of love.

The holy angles lived once in perfect peace and happiness - before sin came into existence. We haven’t yet, because we came into being after sin appeared. But we all have felt pain. And we are all heading towards the same initial state of peace and happiness, all through Jesus’ selflessness proved through a love so strong that could not remain buried more than a Sabbath’s rest, but resurrected to righteously reign forever. We can keep going despite the pain because we know that beyond all suffering there is love, and that beyond all the pain in the universe there is an atoning sacrifice through which total restoration is possible.



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Is the value of something/someone intrinsic or extrinsic?

I’ve often heard people saying that they feel more satisfaction when they work hard in order to earn something or win someone. They testify to enjoy more what they acquire through effort.


Why is it that we appreciate more what we earn thourgh a laborious process? Could there be any connection between this and the fact that we seem to loose the capacity to appreciate something or someone we are being offered for free? What is free or costs little is considered cheap (term that I have heard being used in regards to both things and people). And what is cheap almost implicitly does not have a lot of value. The value of something or someone is direct proportional with the cost of acquisition – seems to be the reasoning of many people. Free and valuable altogether has become almost a paradox. Even God’s gift for us can become unsatisfactory and cheap because, well, just because we don’t know how to appreciate what we are being offered for free..?




Some of us really have a hard time accepting what is free also because we feel that we don’t deserve it. We feel like we cannot owe something unless we’ve earned the right to master it. It wasn’t always like that. Adam and Eve did not have to earn their right to life; it was offered to them for free. Neither did they have to earn their home-garden; it was a wedding gift from their Father. I wonder what capacity has humanity lost? Is it humility? Are we not humble enough to receive something we did not work for, something we did not earn ourselves? Could it be a nuance of selfishness too?

It is said that a guy appreciates a girl when he’s struggled for quite some time in the process of winning her. I’ve heard this over and over again, so I got used to think that this is just the way it is, and therefore this is the way it should be. I might be wrong, but could it be that what we see is a strong tendency to appreciate people based on how involved we’ve been in the process of winning them, rather then based on the intrinsic value the person carries? And if so, would that not be selfishness? After all it does not do any good to someone to value him/her based on your effort in winning him/her. It might award your pride with a grin though.

Pastor Denton Rhone defines happiness as “to want what you have”. On the same note with this definition, I think that much more important than winning someone through intense effort is being able to keep that person. This is where the highest angel in heaven and the parents of humanity seemed to have stumbled. Adam and Eve did not have a hard time receiving God’s gifts; they had a hard time keeping it. About Lucifer it is not recorded that he had a hard time receiving gifts from God; he had a hard time keeping them though. In both cases, the root of the problem was the same: they wanted something else then what they had received; they wanted something “more” (their reasoning proved to be lacking though and what was thought to be more was demonstrated to be less, much less!).

God is contantly offering Himself completely and freely to us and He wishes that we offer ourselves completely and freely to Him. Before the fall everything was free, yet valuable. Jesus’ sacrifice as a cost for our redemption only shows how low sin has taken us that such a price was needed. Therefore the idea of cost (cost of redemption, etc.) makes sense only in the context of sin (in other words - a cost was required only when sin appeared). Following this line of reasoning, isn’t sin the root of “pricing”? In heaven everything and everyone was uniquely valuable, and I mean valuable at superlative!


Staying in the same topic, one more issue is that of growth in connection with the satisfaction of hard work. Challenges no doubt play an important role in the growth process. Back to Adam and Eve: they were supposed to tend the garden, but that did not seem to have been some effortful occupation. They were enjoying both the work and the result of their occupation. They did not need to labor hard in order to take pleasure in the outcome of their employment (all this before the fall). I can only imagine them growing though, yet their growth did not seem to have the same groundwork we place upon it. DO WE - SINFUL CREATURES, REALLY HAVE TO LEARN IT ALL “THE HARD WAY, OR IS THERE ANOTHER WAY?”

• How can we grow without expecting growth to take place necessarily as a result of an elaborate (most of the times painful) process?

• How can we grow by receiving things that are given us for free or for little (“cheap stuff”)?

• How can we learn to appreciate people for the value they have rather then labeling them based on our effort in winning them?