Why Suffering?

A compilation

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A very fitting illustration on the question of “why suffering?” is the story of Doctor Handley Moule, when he visited a coal mine immediately after a terrible underground explosion. At the pit’s mouth was a large crowd, among whom were the relatives of the trapped and suffering miners.

“It is very difficult,” he said, “for us to understand why God should let such an awful tragedy happen. But I have at home an old bookmark given to me by my mother. It is woven in silk, and when I look at the wrong side of it, I see nothing but a tangled mass of threads. It looks like a big mistake! One would think that someone had made it who did not know what she was doing. But when I turn it over and look at the right side, I see there, beautifully embroidered, the letters ‘God is Love!’” “We are looking at this today,” he continued, “from the wrong side! Someday we shall view it from another standpoint and we shall understand.”

God always has a purpose and a plan in suffering, even though we can’t always see it right away. Sometimes “His ways are past finding out,”1 and we just have to trust God, knowing that whatever He does, He does it in love, and that if we don’t understand now, we will later!2

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Suffering often brings out the sweetness and goodness in people. The sorrow, the suffering, the sacrifice and sadness bring out the best in them, the compassion, the love, the tenderness, the brokenness, the love and concern for others. Suffering is meant to be a strength-giver to you, and to equip you for giving strength to others.3

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Jesus Himself knows what it’s like to suffer. He suffered more than any of us. He suffered for all the sins of all the world, and one day soon, God’s Word promises us, all the suffering for those who love God will come to an end, and He “shall wipe away every tear from our eyes, and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying; and there shall be no more pain, for the former things are passed away.”4

Until that perfect day, we will have to endure some suffering, but our compensation, our reward waiting for us in heaven, far outweighs the temporary pain and suffering we may experience down here. As the apostle Paul said, “For I judge that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory which shall be revealed in us.”5

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God relishes surprise. We want lives of simple, predictable ease—smooth, even trails as far as the eye can see—but God likes to go off-road. He places us in predicaments that seem to defy our endurance and comprehension—and yet don’t. By His love and grace, we persevere. The challenges that make our stomachs churn invariably strengthen our faith and grant measures of wisdom and joy we would not experience otherwise.6

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Your quandary has drawn you closer to God, closer to those you love, closer to the issues that matter—and has dragged into insignificance the banal concerns that occupy our “normal time.”

You discover that Christianity is not something passive, pious, and soft. The life of belief teems with thrills, boldness, danger, shocks, reversals, triumphs, and epiphanies. It is through selflessness and service that God wrings from our bodies and spirits the most we ever could give and the most we ever could do.7

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Even though God doesn’t promise us tomorrow, He does promise us eternity—filled with life and love we cannot comprehend—and one that can, in the throes of sickness [or suffering], point the rest of us toward timeless truths that will help us weather future storms.

Through such trials, God bids us to choose: Do we believe, or do we not? Will we be bold enough to love, daring enough to serve, humble enough to submit, and strong enough to acknowledge our limitations? Can we surrender our concern in things that don’t matter so that we might devote our days to things that do? When our faith flags, He throws reminders in our way.8

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Think of the prayer warriors in our midst. They change things, and those of us who have been on the receiving end of their petitions and intercessions know it. There are times when suddenly you feel a surge of the Spirit. Somehow you just know: Others have chosen, when talking to the Author of all creation, to lift us up—to speak of us!9

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We may not know how our contest with sickness [or suffering] will end, but we have felt the touch of God.

We don’t know much, but we know this: No matter where we are, no matter what we do, no matter how bleak or frightening our prospects, each and every one of us, each and every day, lies in the same safe and impregnable place—in the hollow of God’s hand.10

Published on Anchor October 2012. Read by Bethany Kelly.
Music by Michael Dooley.


1 Romans 11:33.

2 Treasures, originally published 1987.

3 Treasures, originally published 1987.

4 Revelation 21:4.

5 Romans 8:18; From Treasures, originally published 1987.

6 Tony Snow, “Cancer's Unexpected Blessings,” Christianity Today, July 20, 2007.

7 Tony Snow, CT.

8 Tony Snow, CT.

9 Tony Snow, CT.

10 Tony Snow, CT.