Why Did God Let This Happen?
God never promises an easy life if we follow Him. We wish He did, and many people think He does, but then we come across passages that talk about us suffering for the faith…or Jesus calling us to carry our own crosses. The apostles suffered. Jesus Himself was crucified. He doesn’t offer easy. Instead, what He offers are the greater gifts: salvation, peace… Himself.
However, suffering is still difficult to endure. We wonder, where is God when the check bounces, when the pink slip comes, when cancer rears its ugly head? We wonder where He is, and why He would allow these horrible things to happen in the first place.
WHY, GOD??
God wanted authentic relationships with us with true love at its center, and so He couldn’t force us to love. He had to give us the choice not to love. Otherwise, we’d be robots without a will to choose. Therefore, in order to open up the door to love, God gave us free will. Which in turn, opened up the door to sin, and evil and darkness. The first sin was committed and it had a spiraling, exponential impact that continues to reverberate today. The earth itself was seemingly knocked off kilter. It is no longer under the full blessing of God and thus: hurricanes, earthquakes, famine, disease, murder, abuse, depression…death.
Creation is groaning. Creation itself can’t wait until things are set right. And one day He will set all things right! Until then…
WHERE IS GOD NOW??
God is in the suffering – He’s right here with us.
He catches our tears (Psalm 56.8). He identifies with the poor (Matthew 25.40). He Himself came and suffered. Jesus suffered more than anyone in the history. His physical death was excruciating; His spiritual sacrifice was so vast it is forever unknowable.
Jesus first identifies with us by suffering and then He offers the opportunity to use our sufferings to identify with Him. Paul says:
I want to know Christ — yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3.10-11)
When we suffer, we are met by Christ and we are somehow closer to Him than ever. That’s why early believers could say things like “Consider it pure joy when you suffer…” Because they knew Jesus was in it with them. It may not always feel like it, but we know that in the end the work of the cross will prove to be restorative in infinite ways. One day we will taste and see what God has prepared for us.
According to Paul, what we suffer here is nothing compared to the glory that will one day be revealed to us (Romans 8.18). That’s not to diminish the suffering we face today, it’s just to say that what God is going to give us is so amazingly, incomprehensively good that we won’t even be able to look at suffering once we set our eyes upon the Glorious One and the gifts he’s prepared for us.
Until then, let’s meet Jesus in our suffering.