“We take the cruelties of the world as a given, as the known and familiar data of experience, and instead of anguishing about why the world is as it is, we look for comfort in coping with it as it is. We don’t ask for a creator who can explain Himself. We ask for a friend in time of grief, a true judge in time of perplexity, a wider hope than we can manage in time of despair. If your child is dying, there is no reason that can erase your sorrow. Even if, impossibly, some true and sufficient explanation could be given you, it wouldn’t help, any more than the inadequate and defective explanations help you, whether they are picture-book simple or inscrutably contorted. The only comfort that can do anything – and probably the most it can do is to help you to endure, or if you cannot endure to fail and fold without wholly hating yourself – is the comfort of feeling yourself loved. Given the cruel world, it’s the love song we need, to help us bear what we must; and, if we can, to go on loving.”
(Francis Spufford, Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity can still make Surprising Emotional Sense, p.104)
“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:37,39)
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Life and limb equilibrium lost because of war, emotions unconsolable because of incurable disease, bedridden because of age or even poverty, or homeless and helpless because of employment elimination.
When these traumatic challenges crash into us and wreck our lives and relationships, we’d like to know “Why?”! But, even for Christians, there is not always an answer.
The patriarch personality Job, in the Old Testament, lost his possessions and then his family members and finally his health. “Why?” he asked out loud and to the Lord! Three friends suggested some cause or even sin in his life. But that was not the answer. Job, though not perfect, had lived openly and obediently before the Lord God. He had to learn (Job, chapters 32-42) that there is not always “an answer” — But to trust and rest in the Lord.
Jesus, too, suffered and sought in prayer to have God to take his pending trauma and death from him. But this was not God’s redemptive plan — and yet the Lord was with Jesus, even through his torture, his crucifixion, his death, plus into and out of his tomb!
When there is not a clear cause for suffering or loss in our lives, then — as Francis Spufford pointed out above (well cited by Ted Schroder)– what will sustain and strengthen us is: a comforter. So in the wisdom and providence of God, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to be our constant and continuous “comforter”! We may not know or learn “why” to our disappointments, our discouragements, our defeats, our diseases, our downcastness (see Psalms 42-43) — But ultimately we will put our hope in God, our Savior and our Lord (43:5), in the One Who conquered death by his death and resurrection!
For our lives and faith, it is less asking “Why my suffering??” than the assurance of “Who is my comforter?”
Do you have a comforter? — Who? Are you… can you be a comforter? — To Whom? May the Spirit of God constantly be our Comforter, and may he use us in others’ lives to be comforters.