Suffering

[snowyangel]

The age-old question...

This world is no stranger to suffering. The last one hundred years--which saw greater technological and medical advances than people living in previous centuries could ever have imagined--witnessed suffering, pain, and despair on a nearly inconceivable scale. Disease and sickness, earthquakes and other natural disasters, war and genocide, poverty and death--a stranger to Earth might be forgiven for concluding that suffering was the defining element of our world.

And suffering in its myriad varieties continues to this day, scaled to fit our everyday lives. We--and people we know and see around us--struggle daily against a world full of pain, a world full of hurts that seem to serve no purpose beyond inflicting misery. Some people struggle to feed and shelter their families; others to understand the loss of a loved one, to find the strength to keep standing beneath the weight of a terrible illness, to lift their eyes to heaven and demand an answer to the age-old question: "Why, God, why?"

I don't know what you're suffering. Maybe it's one of these horrors. Perhaps it's much more personal, more mundane. We each live unique lives with unique hurts, sharing in common an experience of a world that just doesn't seem to work like it should. Each of us suffers personally, in ways that no other person can understand.

Is there hope? Is there an answer to be found? There is, although we may not see it yet. In the meantime, this most important fact remains: we do not suffer alone. That is the promise of God. "... we are heirs--heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings that we may also share in his glory. I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us" (Romans 8:17-8). "For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows" (2 Corinthians 1:5).

Take the time to read through these links and resources, which offer guidance and comfort in dealing with suffering.

[Shinja]

"In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world."- jesus
john 16:33

[Rashiir]

*On doubt - Yea, Ive been told that having doubts is healty. I had this long conversation with a friend about how to me, it seems so unfair that so many "good people" who've never truely heard the gospel message go to hell for not believing. I asked, what about those people in other countries who may have never even heard of God, or maybe the only religion they were brought up with was Buddhism. What if that person truely loved to help others and was kind and generous, but was brought up in a world surrounded by Buddhism and the name Jeusus was never even once spoken. Why would they still be on their way to hell? It seems unfair for them.... I believe the Word of God, and I know that God IS always just and fair, no matter what. And somewhere the bible says that all know in their hearts the existance of God, so are without excuse. But still....

I believe that God finds ways to reach them, whether through us or through methods unknown.