Suffering

God is still there despite any suffering or tragedy you may be experiencing today. But why does God allow suffering you may ask?

Suffering from God's Perspective.

Scripture tells us that God has the tenderness of a father towards his children:

As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.

For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. (Psalm 103:13-14)

Suffering from our Perspective

From a human viewpoint, suffering often seems unjust, as it did to Job when his suffering seemed out of all proportion to anything he might have done to deserve it.

But the Bible also explains (and many of us can testify to this from our own experience) that suffering can be the very thing that drives us back to God when we have drifted away from Him:

Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word… It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes. (Psalm 119:67, 71)

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.[2]