Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. - James 1:1-3
Everyone I know is suffering. My prayer list seems to grow exponentially every day. The world has gone crazy. It would be easy to lose hope and all faith in times like these. Where is God in the midst of all the suffering? Does He see? Does He care?
I've had my fair share of illness: ulcerative colitis for 4 years in my late 20's, 2 major abdominal surgeries, infertility, heartache, loss of my hair and now the C word: cancer. Yet I don't consider my life one of suffering.
There is One who knows what it is like to suffer: not just physically, or emotionally but in every way we as humans can experience. One who has plumbed the depths of despair when He cried from the cross "Father, father, why have You forsaken me?"
Jesus was willing to be born as the frailest of things, a helpless infant in the most savage and uncivilized moment of time to share in ALL of our sufferings at a level none of us can comprehend. Not just physically on the cross at the end of His life on earth, but also growing up. I'm sure he was teased, ostracized (after all, his mother had given birth to him under questionable circumstances). I wouldn't be surprised if his perfect character while growing up was the cause of others hating him even before he began his ministry.
When I am tempted to think that God does not care, understand or comprehend my suffering, loneliness, feelings of powerlessness...all I have to do is to look at what He was willing to endure for 33 years and ultimately on the cross when He didn't have to. He did it for love. He did it for us. He wants us with Him!
If there had been any other way, He need not have gone to the cross.
So the next time you are tempted to think that God just doesn't understand or can't relate to your suffering, remember this passage from Isaiah 53 (written several hundred years before Christ was born):
Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty That we should look upon Him, Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.
He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers,
So He did not open His mouth. By oppression and judgment He was taken away; And as for His generation, who considered That He was cut off out of the land of the living
For the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due? His grave was assigned with wicked men, Yet He was with a rich man in His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.
But the Lord was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, And the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand. As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, As He will bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, And He will divide the booty with the strong; Because He poured out Himself to death, And was numbered with the transgressors; Yet He Himself bore the sin of many, And interceded for the transgressors.