Perhaps the very hardest thing for me to go through as a pastor is to watch others suffer.  It's as if my heart and soul have very thin walls and can't keep the pain out.  The absolute worst thing, however, is when deep hardship happens to someone for no fault of their own-say, an unforeseen car crash that claims the innocent lives of those who are by all intents and purposes thriving and have the promise of long lives.  In other words, your everyday, run-of-the-mill, unexplainable tragedy.  Where I go into attempted damage control is when those affected look to me as a spiritual guide for an answer to the big, ugly and uncomfortable "W" word: Why?  Why does God allow this to happen (or worse, "Why does God do this?")  Man, I hate it, for there is certainly no easy answer-if any at all-with which to assuage their pain.  "God understands suffering," I say.  "God walks with you through this pain, you're not alone," I say.  What tripe.  God may understand and be walking but, just the same, coming to God's defense isn't easy and doesn't readily console.

I have a young couple in mind whose beautiful only child of three was born with a defect and probably won't make it to four.  When I asked them why they come to church, they frankly said they were looking for a miracle of the supernatural kind and hoping to find it there.  My heart broke because I had no guarantees to offer them.  No, unexplainable suffering and heartbreak are just the price we pay for living, no getting around that.  My faith says God never causes such things but God doesn't seem to keep such from happening either.  I don't know why.  The writer of Psalm 66 also talks about coming through some major suffering God allows to happen.  "You brought us into, you let happen," he says.  But then he uses a different word suggestive of a turn: "yet . . ." as if to suggest suffering never has the final word.  And maybe that's the extent of the miracle, I don't know; that somehow, God will give us what we need to rise again and live another day like the phoenix rising out of the ashes, no matter what happens to us.

Bless our God, O peoples,
   let the sound of his praise be heard,
who has kept us among the living,
   and has not let our feet slip.
For you, O God, have tested us;
   you have tried us as silver is tried.
You brought us into the net;
   you laid burdens on our backs;
you let people ride over our heads;
   we went through fire and through water;
yet you have brought us out to a spacious place.

I will come into your house with burnt-offerings;
   I will pay you my vows,
those that my lips uttered
   and my mouth promised when I was in trouble.
I will offer to you burnt-offerings of fatlings,
   with the smoke of the sacrifice of rams;
I will make an offering of bulls and goats.
          Selah

Come and hear, all you who fear God,
   and I will tell what he has done for me.
I cried aloud to him,
   and he was extolled with my tongue.
If I had cherished iniquity in my heart,
   the Lord would not have listened.
But truly God has listened;
   he has given heed to the words of my prayer.

Blessed be God,
   because he has not rejected my prayer
   or removed his steadfast love from me.

 

Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good?  But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an account of the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.  Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame.  For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil.  For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight people, were saved through water.  And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.