How can we understand our own pain?

A dear friend is hurting, deeply hurting. A dear friend of hers is being intubated today because she has a severe case of Covid-19. Her friend has suffered through a lot of difficulty in her life, including her own cancer, her husband's cancer, a child's health issues that proved to be nearly fatal and another child's drug addiction. In spite of it all, this woman and her husband remain faithful and put their lives in God's hands. 

My friend is angry. She asked for prayer and guidance. She asked, "How can God allow this to happen???! Haven’t they been through enough?? Haven’t they proven their faith? How can he let Satan do this?" I think many of us have had similar questions as we have navigated the treacherous waters of life. 

I am encouraged that my friend recognizes that God has not "done these things" to her friends, although He has allowed them to happen. My friend is an emotional person who has lived through her own encounters with evil in her lifetime. When she says she is angry, I know she means it. She and her husband have overcome difficulties in their own marriage, and they remain faithful just as her friend has. 

How does one answer such questions as my friend asked me to answer? I only know that God is faithful and His word is true. Here is how I responded to my friend in her pain and grief: 

Of course, we will pray for you as well as your friend and her family. I completely understand your anger, and so does God, but I can’t answer your question. If I could, I would be God. 

If it has been a while since you have read the book of Job, I encourage you to read it again. Please don’t take that suggestion as a cop out.  Job’s situation was very much like  your friends’. They are good, righteous people who have been true to the Lord, so it cannot be that God is punishing them. Besides, He doesn’t work that way. 

When Job lost everything, he responded: “Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, ‘Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’” (Job 1:20-21) 

Our little neighborhood this summer has seen the unexpected, sudden death of the mother of one of our neighbors, the painful death from pancreatitis of another devout neighbor, my own struggle with leukemia, and we learned today that another neighbor has what is likely colon cancer. 

In my own life, I have experienced betrayal by my first wife, who had an affair with my best friend, divorce, colon cancer and now leukemia. These are all things that are difficult to understand, but they do not have anything to do with whether or not God is good or loving. 

He has told us,  “‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord.” (Isaiah 55:8) God’s perspective is not the same as ours. We see our little corner of the world through the eyes of our personal concept of justice. He sees the entire universe through His eyes of perfect justice and His overall plan for salvation and restoration of the entire universe. 

We cannot possibly know why God does what He does, but as Job learned, the question “why is this happening to me?” Is the wrong question. The proper questions, God reminded Job, are “Who is in charge of the universe? And who am I to question the ways of a holy, righteous, all-knowing God?” 

God understands your anger, dear friend, and He also loves you and your friends and their kids. God is a big boy, and He is not afraid of your anger. So, let your heart be known to Him. Spill your guts to Him in prayer. Rail against Him. He can take it, and when you come to the end of your emotions, He will be there to hold you in His arms and comfort you and to tell you that He loves you so much that He gave His only Son to die so that you can live in the presence of a God who understands, who is always available, and before Whom you can do nothing to make Him love you more or love you less. His love is perfect, no matter how it may appear to our little human minds and hearts in the midst of our pain.