Question: What do you mean by "joy and pain in the presence of God'? Why should there be pain.
Answer: If there were no pain, one would not enjoy the experience of joy. It is pain which helps one to experience joy. Everything is distinguished by its opposite. The one who feels pain deeply is more capable of experiencing joy. If you would ask me personally, I would say: if there were no pain, life would be most uninteresting to me, for it is by pain that the heart is penetrated, and the sensation of pain is a deeper joy. Without pain the great ones, the great musicians, poets, dreamers, and thinkers would not have reached that stage which they reached, and would not have moved the world. If they had always had joy, they would not have touched the depth of life.