Finding Hope and Meaning Amidst Suffering

and the the place to begin is really in silence and heart actually says he wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal around this particular occasion reflecting on these questions uh when lots of people were raising those questions of where was God is it possible to believe in a good God in the midst of human suffering [00:03:17]

and he talks about how the place to begin is with silence that simply acknowledges the reality of suffering and acknowledges the reality that we don't have all the answers to this that there is a great mystery and that to try to be facile or to pretend like there is a way to explain why it is that people suffer the way that they do can do far more harm than good [00:03:40]

and of course sometimes there are people in the church who not only want to answer but want to give an answer in a way that can make suffering worse for people or create misunderstandings about God in particular uh heart talks about the idea that somehow God is the author of bad things and understanding of who God is or what it is that God does that says really it's just his will when terrible things happen [00:04:06]

and he says in quite an eloquent way that that is not the case that there is a mystery to evil that what scripture teaches us clearly about God is that God is a good god and the creation itself shows us this and though we know it is a good thing that there is the earth that it is better that the Earth exists it's better that creation exists than that it did not [00:04:37]

and that the evil and suffering comes in it is something that we are not able to fully give an explanation for but that when we seek to understand it where scripture consistently points us to is that God is a God who cares and that particularly it points us to the mystery of the Cross and that God himself is a God who chooses to experience suffering [00:05:01]

and that we see in the Willing voluntary acceptance of suffering on the cross by Jesus the heart of God the love of God in its deepest expression that God is a God who chooses to enter into human sorrow for some reason and that we are pointed Beyond um the pain of our world to a hope not an optimism that things will get better but I hope that creation is good and that God will one day redeem it [00:05:19]

and so in Romans 8 for example Paul says that creation itself groans in agony like in childbirth and that it was subjected to frustration not willingly but in Hope by the one who subjected it that one day it will experience Liberation that God will one day bring about the Redemption the reconciliation the healing the wiping away of Tears [00:05:55]

and that really the alternative to understanding this in light of suffering is simply to say there is no meaning it's just random chaotic pain that can never be redeemed so uh heart ends with these words and I wanted to offer them to you as we reflect on what's going on in our country this day and remember that the reality is there is great pain in some human life in many human lives every single day [00:06:31]

uh that the hope of the Christian faith is that one day God will bring about the Redemption the healing of all things until that final Glory however the world remains divided between two kingdoms where light and darkness life and death grew up together and await the Harvest in such a world our portion is Charity what we know that we are called to is not despair but love and our sustenance is faith [00:07:18]

I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child I do not see the face of God but the face of his enemy when I see the death of a child I do not see the face of God I don't look at that and say oh yes God planned all this out this is God's will for death and destruction to come here [00:08:00]

Paul talks about death in this very very deep way in First Corinthians 15 and he does not say death is God's instrument or death is God's tool or death is what God uses when it's time to he says death is the enemy it is wrong God is opposed to it and it will be The Last Enemy to be defeated [00:08:23]

for it is a faith that set us free from optimism long ago and taught us hope instead optimism is the belief that things will get better and often from a human perspective commitment to progress through technology through education through human means leads people to optimism and then a moment of suffering comes and is defeated hope is the conviction that life makes sense that life has meaning because God created it and God will one day redeem it [00:08:53]