But What About Suffering?

Peter writes to Christians scattered across the Roman Empire — believers being insulted, beaten, and in some places killed for their faith. His first word to them is not a strategy. It is a posture.

Don't be surprised.

Many of us were sold a quieter version of the Christian life — one where, once you walk through the door of faith, the trouble stays outside. That is not the Christian life Peter is describing, and it is not the Christian life Jesus described. He told His disciples plainly, *"In the world you will have tribulation."* The road of faith is not a road around suffering. It is a road that passes through it.

The Bible is a book written by suffering people to suffering people. Joseph in Pharaoh's dungeon, falsely accused. Daniel in the lions' den. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the furnace. John the Baptist in the executioner's hand. Stephen under the stones. None of them were spared. Each one was sustained.

If you are walking through something hard right now, it is not because your faith is failing. It is not because God has forgotten you. It is because you are in good company, on a well-worn road, with a Savior who has walked it first.

Today — this Memorial Day, of all days — is a fitting time to remember that some have paid the highest price to give the rest of us the right to gather, to worship, to read this small devotional in peace. And remembering them, we remember that suffering does not have the last word. Not for them. Not for us.

When suffering arrives — the bad report from your doctor, the call about your son or daughter, the empty side of the bed — almost everyone reaches for the same first question. *Why me?* It is the most natural question in the world. And it is, with respect, the wrong one.

Consider Job. For most of the book that bears his name, Job presses God with that question. *Why me, God? Why are You doing this?* And chapter after chapter, God does not answer. When God finally speaks — the longest unbroken speech by God the Father anywhere in Scripture — He never tells Job *why.* He simply tells Job *who.* I am God. You are not.

And Job, who has lost everything, who is sitting in ashes scraping his sores with broken pottery, replies, *"Though he slay me, I will hope in him."* Job did not get the answer he wanted. He got the One he needed.

That is the better question. Not *why me* — but *why me, Lord? What is Your purpose in this?* And the truth is, in our experience, God usually does not tell us. What He does give us is the certainty that there is a purpose. There is a reason. There is a God who sees, who knows, who is not absent from your story.

Knowing that there is a reason — even one we cannot yet see — is what will keep you sane in the middle of the night. It will keep you from reaching for the bottle, the pills, or worse. There is a difference between not knowing the answer and there not *being* an answer. Christian faith is built on the second of those being false.

The question "why me, Lord?" sounds like a small change in punctuation. It is actually the largest change in posture. It moves you from the position of accuser to the position of son. From demanding a verdict to seeking a Father. From wrestling against God to wrestling with Him — and finding, like Job, that even the wrestling is grace.

Ben Sasse — former US senator, now president of the University of Florida — was diagnosed last year with stage four pancreatic cancer. The kind that, statistically, ends a person within a year or two. In an interview with CBS, he was asked whether his faith in God had been shaken.

He said no. And then he said this: *"There are no maverick molecules in the universe."*

Not one. Not the cell that turned cancerous. Not the drunk driver who ran the red light. Not the news report that gutted you on Tuesday afternoon. Whatever it is, it did not catch God by surprise. He either allowed it or sent it.

That is not a sentimental verse you stitch on a pillow. That is the towering claim of biblical Christianity. Paul says it with even more weight in Romans 8:28: *for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.* All things. Not most things. Not the things we would have chosen. *All* things.

The philosopher Alvin Plantinga has argued the case academically for decades, and his answer is the cleanest I have ever read. If we believe in a God big enough to be blamed for the suffering of the world, then by the same logic we have to allow that He is big enough to have reasons for it that we, with our finite vantage point, simply cannot see. You cannot have a God large enough to indict and small enough to fit inside your understanding.

It is one or the other. You either have an ordained universe with a problem of suffering, or a non-ordained universe with a problem of meaning. Most of us, in the honest places of our hearts, already know which side we land on. The God who counts the hairs on your head is the same God who counts the molecules in your cells. Not one of them is loose. Not one of them is wasted.

Which means your pain is not a random event in a meaningless universe. It is a thread the Author is weaving, in a story that ends in glory.

When you cannot see what God is doing, hold on to what He has said.

Andrew Murray, the great South African pastor of a century ago, gave the church a four-line catechism for the seasons when you do not know what to do next. It is short enough to memorize, and deep enough to live in.

*First: God brought me here.* It is by His will that I am in this difficult place — and in that fact I will rest.

*Second: He will keep me here in His love.* He will give me grace to behave as His child while I am here.

*Third: He will make the trial a blessing.* He will teach me the lessons He intends for me to learn.

*Fourth: In His good time He can bring me out again.* How and when, He knows.

Or, as Murray summed it up himself: *I am here by God's appointment, in His keeping, under His training, for His time.*

Notice what those four anchors do. They take the chaos of an unknown season and put it inside the certainty of a known God. You may not know how long this is for. You may not know what God is trying to teach. You may not know when it ends. But you know who brought you here. You know who is keeping you. You know who is training you. You know who decides when it ends.

That is not a promise that the trial will end tomorrow. That is a promise that you are not alone in it today. And on most hard days, that is the difference between despair and faith — knowing whose hand you are in.

Memorize the four anchors. Pray them. Repeat them on the days you cannot pray anything else. You do not need to feel all four at once. You need to repeat them until you begin to.

There is a pattern in Scripture, and it runs through every story God tells.

Suffering. Judgment. Glory.

Jesus suffered — so your suffering is not meaningless. Jesus submitted to the judgment of men — so you might stand un-condemned before the judgment of God. Jesus endured death — so you might have life. Jesus conquered hell — so you might enter heaven. That is the cross-shaped pattern of the Christian life, and it is not optional. It is the road.

C.S. Lewis put it like this in *The Problem of Pain:* *"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."* Sometimes God has to hurt us in order for us to pay attention. Not because He is cruel — but because we are stubborn. The pain is the megaphone. It is meant to bring us home.

It will help to remember that even Jesus Himself, in Gethsemane the night before He was arrested, prayed a prayer that did not get the answer He asked for. *"Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me. Nevertheless, not My will, but Thine, be done."* The Father said no. The Son went to the cross. And from that *no* came the salvation of the world.

So when you ask for healing — for your child, for your marriage, for yourself — and the Father seems to say *not yet,* or *not in the way you wanted,* you are not alone in that experience. The Lord of Glory has prayed your prayer. He knows.

This is the last day of the week. The sermon was Sunday. The cards were Monday through today. By tomorrow you'll be back to whatever the rest of your life looks like. Take this with you: suffering does not have the last word over your life. Judgment is not the last word. Glory is. And the One who walked that road first did it so that He could walk it again, this time with you.

Hold on. The story is not over. The best chapter has not been written yet.