Why God allows suffering ............. Parables 765

October 2, 2002

For this series on why God allows suffering, I had prepared an outline for each article. The past couple of weeks have been filled with so many other responsibilities that I’d no time to write, or even think about writing.

Then came Sunday, September 15. My mother woke that morning with her usual cheerful attitude, and asked her care givers in the nursing home to play some music on her tape deck. As they began to prepare her for the day, she bowed her head and died.

My mother had Alzheimer's yet still recognized her family and maintained a remarkable attitude. She was happy, thankful, and as her nurses said, a joy to take care of.

With great sorrow in our loss, I’ve fumbled through my responsibilities in preparation for her funeral. Today, I determined to finish the next article in this series. When I opened the file, my first line said, “God allows suffering because this is the way that He takes us home.”

Death is inevitable. When someone is ill, my husband often says, “We are all terminal, but most of us don’t know when — so we need to prepare for it when we are alive.”

Most of us do not know how death will come either. Will it be an accident? Illness? Great suffering? Even “natural causes” involve some pain as the body ages and common illnesses or organ failures join hands with death to carry us from this world. Suffering and dying usually go together.

That said, some suffer more than others. We have two doctors living nearby. One told me a horror story of “the worst death I have ever seen” and another talked about patients who linger for months, even years, in pain. They want to die but cannot.

Some advocate euthanasia as the means to overcome the pain of dying. Others will not go that far but will ask for morphine or some medication to ease the pain. Even though many people seem to fear pain far more than dying, the Bible calls death the final enemy.

However, for God’s people, there are no guarantees of an easy death. Hebrews speaks of Old Testament saints who were stoned, sawed in two, and put to death by the sword. Jesus Himself died a horrible death. He suffered more than we can imagine.

Even so, the New Testament also says that Jesus endured the Cross “for the joy set before him” and that some of God’s people “were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might face a better resurrection.” That is our hope.

Hebrews 2 says that Jesus shared in our humanity so “by His death he might destroy him who holds the power of death — that is, the devil — and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”

Because of Jesus, we no longer need to be afraid of suffering or dying. Those who believe in Christ know that because He lives, we also will live.

Suffering does not always imply punishment. Suffering does not always lead to a greater good, at least in this life, but in the suffering of death, it can be the doorway to eternal life with Christ. That is the greatest good of all.

Ultimately, God takes responsibility for our suffering. He knows all about us. As a butterfly must not be helped out of its cocoon, or a chick aided through the shell of an egg, our Maker may have an unseen purpose in the struggle of some to move from the confinements of this life to the freedom of eternal life.

Yet for others, God has a different plan, perhaps just to show the gentleness of Jesus. My mother’s suffering was minimal. Because she knew Jesus and was not afraid of death, when her time came, she went without any resistance.