It’s the age-old question. “If God is good and all powerful, why is there pain, suffering, and evil in the world?”
All kinds of evil, pain, and suffering you go through can color the lens by which you approach this question.
Loss of job, cancer of any stripe, death itself, financial debt, watching friends or family suffer, floods, homelessness, orphans, the list can go on and on.
We do not think much about pain and suffering, until, that is, pain and suffering affects us personally.
Pain and suffering only makes us sit up and listen when it’s personal.
So when we go through a traumatic experience of any sort, we ask, “If God is good…” We think, “God can’t love me and he can’t be all powerful since he’s letting me go through this!”
There is a myriad of answers to the question of pain: God brings pain in our lives for His glory, to teach us, to mold us into someone better, to help others, among many other possible answers.
But the most important thing that we must remember when pain becomes personal:
We are not left alone in our suffering
Scripture tells us that Jesus, Who is God by the way, was tempted in everything that is common to man:
Hebrews 2:17 “Therefore, He (Jesus) had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.18 For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted.”
During a hurricane, which tree feels the full force of the storm?
The tree which never falls but stands firm until the end.
Jesus stood firm to the end–the end that is death–even the death of the cross being forsaken by the Father. He did this so that WE would never be forsaken, but fully and gloriously accepted and loved by the Father. Jesus is the one in whom we must trust because He has gone through the greatest pain and suffering anyone has ever gone through–standing firm to the end.
Jesus did this for us and in our place. To the end.
You are not left unto yourself, that is, if you trust Jesus. Trust Jesus and rest in His finished work on the cross.
“For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” 2 Corinthians 4:17-18.