Our Response to Pain and Suffering
Unless you live in a cave in the backwoods somewhere, you are quite aware that the world is spinning out of control. War. Civil unrest. Political divide. Uncertain financial markets. Weather extremes. Gun violence. Just yesterday, another mass shooting. This time, a juvenile in Raleigh, North Carolina, shot and killed five people, injuring at least two others. And those are just the national and world events. What about the things closer to home for you and for me. I believe we have all felt some level of pain and suffering over the past few years. And often we just don’t have answers for some things that happen. There are any number of life events that cause us to pause and ask, “Where is God?” or “Why?”
Today I want to focus not on those two questions, even though they are real and reasonable questions to ask in times of tragedy and suffering. Check out my archives page for posts addressing those questions. Instead, I want to focus on how we should respond in our own moments of pain and sufferings.
I want to say that while pain and suffering does not come from God, in his providence He allows it to happen, and can use our pain and suffering for good. Hard to understand, right? But it is true. While suffering is never good from our point of view, in Romans 8:28 we read these words, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Notice the word “all;” this means the good and the not so good, the easy and the not so easy, the joys and the sorrows.
Having said that, how can we respond to our own pain and suffering? There might not be any better illustration that Job. In Job chapter 1 we read that all ten of Job’s children died in a natural disaster when a windstorm blew down their house. Job was faced with the reality of seeing ten new graves on the hilltop. How did he respond? Surely, he had all the same emotions we experience when we face tragedy and suffering. With that kind of pain, it certainly would have been understandable if Job turned his back to God.
But, instead, in Job 1:20-21 we read – At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised.” Some versions say, “Blessed be the name of the LORD.”
I am in no way downgrading the severity of anyone’s pain and suffering, or the devastation that comes with it, because it is real, and truthfully, it stinks. But Job shows us that it is possible to worship God even without explanations, even when we don’t know all the reasons.
So, today, it is my prayer that you experience the real life-changing presence of God, both in moments of ecstasy and moments of heartache, high on the mountaintop or low in the valley.
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