By Barry Buzza

This week I've officiated at two funerals and just received a call about a third friend who died last night. The services have gone well. Both, the wonderful husband and the dear wife who died where honoured with appropriate love and accolades.

But the reality of loss is really just beginning to settle in on the grieving spouses and the suffering children. The mourning process will go on for much longer than we expect it to.

Life is hard.

I am asked the question many times in a month, "Why is life so difficult? Why is there so much pain?"

I'm sure the answer to that question could be debated for a lifetime, but in a nature show a while ago I did receive a little insight into the question of pain. A female giraffe gives birth to her calf while standing. The little guy's first peek out of his mother's womb is from a ten-foot high vantage point. Head and feet together make their exit and with a whomp he falls to the ground. What a memorable beginning to the new life that is ahead.

You'd think that mommy giraffe would have a bit of pity on the poor young calf, maybe lick him clean or offer some milk, but no she doesn't. As the dizzy offspring shakes the last remnant of birth fluid from his eyes and tries to get up onto his wobbly stick-like legs, his giant mother bends down to look over her new baby. Then she takes her powerful front leg and swings it like a golf club at her newly born calf. She sends him rolling!

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He has no idea what's going on, but as mommy giraffe walks toward him and stands above him again, he assumes he's supposed to try getting onto his spindly legs. As he does, hoping for encouragement rather than abuse from his mother, she does it again! Swinging her pendulum-like leg, she sends him rolling on the dust once more. And then she does it again and again.

Why would any mother treat her offspring with such disregard? Doesn't she love her baby? It's the same reason that a baby chick struggles to get out of its eggshell; a butterfly has to push, twist and force its wings free from the cocoon; a salmon has to swim, jump and smash against rocks before it can lay eggs; or a human baby hurts so much when coming out of his mommy.

Because pain is the pathway to prosperity; struggle precedes strength; winding paths are the road to winning. Someone said to me recently that the bumps along the road of life are the road to life!

So mommy giraffe, because she loves her baby giraffe and wants to prepare him for the dangers and the challenges of life, chooses to begin the disciplining process in the first moments of his life.

Simply put, where there is no pain, there is no gain. As hard as it is, we grow and mature more through the difficult days than we do when everything is rosy. Life is challenging, but thankfully, challenge, even death, can spur us on to greater success in life.

Barry Buzza, a veteran pastor, is the president of the The Foursquare Gospel Church of Canada. www.foursquare.ca

July 2/2009