Suffering: The Question of "WHY?"

Suffering: The Question of “WHY?”

I’ve been working on a series of lessons regarding suffering. At times I get lost in it thinking about the suffering that I have endured as well as close family and friends who have suffered. I can hardly shake my grief. Then I read about, hear about, the tragedy in Texas where close to 110 have died and many more are missing due to the flooding of the Guadalupe River that took their lives.  Here again, I struggle with suffering and I don’t know one of those folks, never met one of the children. I have never suffered like that.  But it hasn’t stopped me from asking about undeserved suffering that we have faced, with the simple question “why.” 

So this morning, when Bec and I were praying, God brought to my mind one line from an article and then guided my prayer.  It was this:

“……the bodies of two sisters from Dallas, ages thirteen and eleven, were found fifteen miles from where their cabin (Q: at Camp Mystic) was swept into the river. Their hands were locked together” (Denison, 8 VII 25).

These sisters found each other, held on to each other, and died together. But instead of this making me angry with God, here is the insight that He gave me. It does not answer the question “why” but it lets me see more of Him in our prayer.

Jesus felt and experienced suffering probably all His life but especially in His last three years of living. During the Passion of our Lord, I believe his suffering was at least threefold: emotional, loneliness due to abandonment, and physical.

First, His suffering was first emotional. He wanted the hurt and heartbreak of taking on the sins of the world, away, in essence asking: ‘Father, is there no other way, do I have to go through it this way?’ 

Second, relating to the first, He wanted the cup of suffering to be removed. This grief was caused by anguish of contradiction. If I were in His place, I may have asked: “why do I deserve this?” But He ended up giving Himself the answer which He knew all along: “Father, not My will but Yours.” 

Third, it was here that He, like most of us at some time in our lives, felt the suffering of abandonment of God. The One who could help us did not seem to be present. We feel all alone with no one, not even God, that can help. He experienced this abandonment of His Father when He thought He needed Him most, much like a parent who can do nothing for their child as they watch their child die. He cried out: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:26).  

Fifth, there was the physical suffering. On the Cross He experienced possibly the most excruciating dying of anyone ever. His dying took hours and He felt every bit of it. 

Jesus felt the abandonment of His Father when He thought He needed Him most, much like a parent who can do nothing for their child as they watch their child die. He anguished as to why evil seemed to be triumphing over good and then, the suffering of loneliness where there was no one, not even God there to help. So, He cries: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:26).  

Fourth, but He knew His Father was present and as He was giving up His Spirit to His Father, in His last breath (Mark 15:37), the words: “Father, I entrust My spirit into Your hands” (Luke 23:46). This is the point that we need to get to in our suffering.  

We were born in a fallen world, one that was corrupted by humanity. So our world is not perfect. But I still ask “why.” We may never know “why” in this earthly life even though we try to explain with the logic of the “wherefore”, “therefore”, and “never the less.” But it doesn’t help. Yet, what Jesus went through for our sake, His suffering, we see the result. It doesn’t answer our “why” but it does give us insight into the sovereignty of God who created and loves us. 

1. Please let me draw a parallel between Jesus’s holding onto His Father and the the two sisters holding onto each other. Its what we do, hold on to God and to one another and He holds on to us. 
2. While it is difficult to comprehend the profound grief experienced by the parents of the children and those who perished, I can envision the anguish of God, the Father, as He witnessed His Son endure suffering.
3. However, as Jesus, moments before his final breath, surrendered to the Father, I believe these young Christian girls released themselves to God, their heavenly Father. It is my understanding that the sisters and other Christians who perished in the flood were in God’s embrace and have now joined Him. They are eternally with Him and will remain so from this moment forward.

That is the reason that Paul can say in the midst of His suffering (2 Corinthians 11:23-27; 6:4-10) and impending death: “Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him” (Romans 6:8); If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord (Romans 14:8); “For me, living is Christ and dying is gain” (Philippians 1:21).

A pastor, who was in charge of receiving survivors at Camp Mystic reunification center, and witnessed many of these children, said: “being offloaded from the bus: missing shoes, having dirt all over them, being hungry, seeing their parents from a distance, and weeping out of joy.” I can imagine the joy of those parents who saw their child come off the bus, but I can’t imagine the deep, guttural, piercing, shocking, numbing, profound sadness, brokenness, despair, emptiness, and even anger within a mother or father when their child did not get off that bus or was later notified of their child’s death. 

A person who lost a family member in the flood posted:

“If your heart is broken, I assure you God is near. He is gentle with your wounds. And He is still worthy, even when your soul is struggling to believe it. Trust doesn’t mean you’re over the pain; it means you’re handing it to the only One who can hold it with love and restore what was lost. For we do not grieve as those without hope.” (Tavia Hunt)

Like all of my friends and family, including myself, there is some suffering that I cannot answer the proverbial question: “Why?” But because I cannot answer it, I’m not going to disavow my God. I will all the more hold onto what I know of Him and trust Him.  

(1) He loves His creation, and because you and I are part of that creation, He loves us. (Jeremiah 1:4-5) 

(2) I know that I may see only darkly, but one day I will see plainly, face to face.  (1 Corinthians 13:12)

(3) I know that I will see Him and those who died within the faith one day, in a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 7:14b-17; 21:1-7)

(4) I know that in that day He will make everything new (Revelation 21:1)

(5) I know and have experienced how He turns (blessed) hope into reality, but in Heaven, there will be no need for hope, because it will all be real.  

(6) And because I know this about God, He wants me to offer that blessed hope found in Jesus and His resurrection to all persons. (1 Peter 3:15)

I will cry and ask “why?” when I feel or see unfair suffering. I will weep with those that weep for the suffering and loss that they are enduring. I will be “cast down” but only for a while.  I will trust God who blessed me with life and love and ones to love. I will seek not to think of myself but to think first of the Giver of life and then the lives of others who were/is God’s blessing to me. I will hold on to God to receive what He has for me in this time of suffering and sorrow.  He will not replace what I have lost due to suffering, but He will walk with me. And I will be open to His holding me, comforting me, and loving me.  And like Joni Eareckson Tada, a wonderful lady, my age, who became a quadriplegic at the age of 17, said when she had not been healed: 

“He has chosen not to heal me, but to hold me. The more intense the pain, the closer His embrace. The greatest good suffering can do for me is to increase my capacity for God. Real satisfaction comes not in understanding God’s motives, but in understanding His character, in trusting in His promises, and in leaning on Him and resting in Him as the Sovereign who knows what He is doing and does all things well.”

For those of you who face suffering, I do believe God faces it with you. He grieves with you as He grieved for His own Son.  But, God knows that this was not then, or is it now, the rest of the story.  He has prepared His home for those that enter His Kingdom in Heaven before we do. The suffering found within grief can be overwhelming, causing great pain but we don’t walk this road alone but with God.  And the reality of our blessed hope is there is a new day when we will be reunited with those that now live with God in Heaven.

Quentin

Sharecropper’s Inheritance

9 VII 25