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When you’re warm, it’s hard to explain how you feel when you’re cold; when you’re healthy, it’s difficult to understand how a sick person feels. Those who have never experienced the devastation of suffering are little qualified to pass judgment on the emotions and feelings of those who hurt. Yet from the days of Job to the present, the healthy berate the sick and suffering.
When Job suffered, his three friends believed they knew exactly why he was in pain. The only problem was that they were self-appointed experts who spoke neither from personal experience nor from knowledge.
The stark reality is that there are no easy answers to one of humanity’s oldest questions, “Why pain? Why do good when people suffer, especially when some who are evil seem to avoid suffering?” The issue of pain and suffering is one issue that will never be resolved until we cross heaven’s threshold. I have lived long enough to understand that trusting is more important than understanding, and tasting the grace of God that can take you through the dark valley is better than wondering if God is sufficient to meet you in your need.
I have also learned that suffering is not punishment, nor health a reward for the righteous, and that trial, which make some bitter, humble and strengthen others. The fact is that some waste their dose of suffering and others profit greatly.
“Before I was afflicted I went astray,” said the psalmist, but he quickly adds, “but now I obey your word” (Psalm 119:67). Far better to know that God is with you in the dark hour and that He will sustain you and be your comfort and help, than to know exactly why He has allowed something to happen.
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