Making Sense of Suffering

Last Friday, terrorists attacked innocents in a coordinated attack throughout Paris, killing more than a hundred and injuring hundreds more.  ISIS claimed responsibility.  The international community has united in support of France and against the violent actions of Islamic extremists. 

My wife I immigrated to Canada with our young family eleven years ago.  Sue and I have been married nearly 30 years.  We’ve been tested and challenged in just about every way a family can be.   You don’t go through thirty years without encountering pain and heartache along the way. 

Whether the scale makes headlines or is private and personal, each one of us has known suffering.   A passage in the biblical book of Hebrews, chapter twelve offers perspective on the suffering we will know in this life, and more importantly, how to process it.   

No one knows for sure who wrote the book of Hebrews.  What we do know is that the author knows the roots of the Old Testament in the story of Jesus, and he (probably a male) cares personally about his audience.  Like many across the world even today, he writes to Christians who are experiencing opposition for their faith, even persecution.  They are thinking about giving up. 

The author goes through the first several chapters demonstrating from the Old Testament that Jesus is superior to Moses, and superior even to the angels.  He implores us to persevere.  A greater covenant means greater responsibility. 

He uses Olympic imagery. We’re surrounded by a throng of witnesses, an audience of believers, now dead, who have gone before, cheering us in the arena as we who remain battle by little more than faith and our wits. 

The passage is one exhorting God’s people to hang in there.  Recalling the early Olympic Games, he challenges God’s children to run with endurance; to look to Jesus; to lift up our tired hands; to choose straight paths; and not to give up.

Hebrews12:1-17, and more specifically 3-11, talks about framing the suffering we experience as getting the tender – and often tough – discipline of a loving God, a loving Father.   When we suffer, we often ask why.  We look for answers.  We grope for meaning.  Why did God allow this?

If you’re not a Christian, this passage might help you put suffering into context.  It can help you re-frame the bad into something that makes a little sense.  If you’re Christian, hopefully you can find strength and maybe even some healing.

The passage gives us three clues:

1.      .   Suffering can have a purpose, and properly understood, it’s a sign you’re a child of God.
2.      .   There are two ways you can go off the rails when suffering.  We’ll look at both and see how to avoid them.
3.      .   Two signs of a well-loved (and by that I mean, well-disciplined) child of God. 

      Suffering is necessary, but it doesn’t have the last word. So in the next few posts, let’s think about how we think about suffering.