The Mysteries of Life, Loss, Pain, and God

At least once it’s going to happen in life:

To be placed in the furnace of grief.

But how are we to see God in this?

How do we get our relief?

We must know it’s a trap,

To think God’s brought this about,

Because the devil intends,

To take us through a resentful route.

There, we may stand there,

In the reality of our pain,

We should know God is for us,

And know it’s not about blame.

God cannot save us from pain in this broken, fallen existence, but He can give us something infinitely better as a reward for not having given up. Even if we have given up, God desires to resurrect us, for it’s never too late as we live and breathe. All the things we endured in this life, the pain, the rejection, etc, will be made relevant and understandable in the life to come. Though it doesn’t seem to make sense, all will make sense eventually.

This is the manifesto we must believe in: the one that makes sense in a nonsensical scenario that is our entire existence in the cast of grief.

The Perennial Question: Why Does God Allow Suffering?

This is a hard question to answer, and there are several valid ideas of response that make theological sense, yet I’m not going there.

I prefer the mystery of holding something indigestible and seeking God in any event. We, therefore, have no cause to stumble when our theology has to hold to a limited understanding of what’s really happening.

It may be a moot point, though it isn’t for so many who are stuck irreverently in their resentment toward God – a God who is supposed to bless them for their inherent goodness.

Well, none of us is that good, really. We all deserve death, yet we have life in Jesus, for the cosmic sacrifice two millennia ago that has eternal ramifications for the resurrecting of humanity. What we experience in loss and grief and pain is what Jesus experienced – a taste of what our Lord went through. So we have a God who understands and grieves along with us.

But all will make more sense in eternity. Blame is irrelevant.

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All the things we endured in this life, the pain, the rejection, etc, will be made relevant and understandable in the life to come. Though it doesn’t seem to make sense, all will make sense eventually.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.