25 Oct 2020
How can we believe in the love of God when there appears to be so much evidence to contradict it? Often, we are deeply perplexed by the tragedies of life. We wonder why ‘bad things’ happen to ‘good’ people; we find it so hard to understand why God allows so many setbacks in our lives personally. The following written by the late John Stott is so perceptive:
“What the Bible does is not to solve the problem of suffering but gives us the right perspective from which to view it. Then, whenever we are torn with anguish, we will climb the hill called Calvary and from that unique vantage ground, survey the calamities of life.
What makes suffering insufferable is not so much the pain involved as the feeling that God doesn’t care. We picture him lounging in a celestial armchair, indifferent to the sufferings of the world. It is this slanderous caricature of God that the cross smashes to smithereens. We are to see him not on a comfortable chair but on a cross. For the God who allows us to suffer once suffered himself in Jesus Christ, and he continues to suffer with us today. There is a question mark against human suffering, but over the mark we boldly stamp another mark – the cross.