I’m an emotional being. As a writer, I’m constantly thinking about the human response to impossible circumstances and real suffering. I pray for the ability to empathize. I meditate on personal times of walking through the wilderness, when everything I know about God is put on trial.

We can’t compare pain by considering one person’s agony worse than another. The intensity and depth our suffering is as unique as we are and as varied as the hardships we face. We’re alike in this truth: we all suffer. No life is exempt from it. 

God loved us to the point of watching His Son die willingly, knowing He held the power to stop it. He is well able to carry the pain we give to Him. He faithfully walks through our suffering with us. He has the heart of a perfect Father, who has watched the world He created become imperfect, ravaged by pain and grief He never intended. 

This is a time to need God and lean on each other. Love and comfort flow from heaven through the people God brings into our lives. We can be sure it’s how we’re held close to His chest, near His heart, for the solace He alone can give.

“Suffering is not good in itself. What is good in any painful experience is, for the sufferer, his submission to the will of God, and, for the spectators, the compassion aroused and the acts of mercy to which it leads.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain