Suffering leads us to ask for a cause. If we know the cause, it somehow makes it more acceptable or easier to embrace the fact that the suffering took place.  I have high cholesterol because I eat too much fatty food. I’m overweight because I don’t exercise enough.

But what about tragedy or suffering inflicted on innocent people who were perfectly healthy that became suddenly sick, or people who were innocent bystanders who encountered extremely evil violence at the hands of individuals not so well understood or known or explained?  As a pastor I grapple with walking with people in my church through suffering of all kinds. The answers should never be easily handed down platitudes. Those words seem as hard as the floor they land on right in front of the person I may attempt to assuage.

Rather, pointing to the redemptive work of Christ on the cross is our best and greatest answer for suffering.  The cross provides a glimpse into the love of a Savior who wants to redeem us from sin and evil. With a constant 24 hour news cycle, and a nose in the phone world, we are living in different times. The world has changed.   Response to tragedy can now be live streamed and instantly accessible, even if inaccurate or short sighted. People can have sound-byte answers to any question they ask in an instant.

One news article points to the incredible number of mass shootings over the past 2 or 3 years. What gets lost in the reporting are all the lives wrecked, devastated and forever marred by the loss of a loved one. A father gone. No longer able to come home or provide for his family. A child gone. No longer able to go through the normal routines of life and growing up.  This is the face of suffering and tragedy.

My heart grieves for all the lives lost. Even now, “thoughts and prayers” are ridiculed as meaningless phrases that carry no action or provide real resolution to tragedy. But real thought put into the price paid by the suffering, prayers for relief of the grieving, prayers for the redemption of those who are far from God and commit heinous crimes, and prayers for God to redeem our society and bring it back to a nation who once feared Almighty God is perhaps the only greatest remedy available to us.

The recent tragedies in El Paso Texas and Dayton Ohio which spanned only half a day between the two prove that evil, racism, and hatred of mankind is still alive and kicking. As reasons for the tragedies continue to unfold we must look to our Creator more than ourselves for answers. What occurred was evil. But even out of evil God can still and does work—in spite of it.  The cross was evil man putting down a holy God. But the grave could not hold God’s Son. The power of the resurrection provides us all hope beyond any suffering this life can bring. As families grieve, as America grieves at yet another senseless shooting, I pray we look to God through Jesus Christ for comfort, for redemption, for forgiveness, and yes, for spiritual revival in our land.

Jesus said,  I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. You will have suffering in this world. Be courageous! I have conquered the world.” (John 16:33). May we walk with those in deep pain whenever we have the chance. May we seek to be redemptive with our words as others experience unthinkable pain and loss. Pain in this life is real, but there is also a Savior who has overcome. We must trust God through the dark times of life, and we must pray to a Savior who is there with us, right in the middle of our pain. Why does tragedy and suffering happen? There are no easy answers this side of Heaven. Sin, a broken world…but that doesn’t present a package with a nice little bow on top as the complete answer to suffering. We must trust in a God who’s understanding is beyond ours, whose love is vastly greater than ours, and who’s ability to redeem us is far reaching. May we echo Job when he cried out even in the midst of great loss and suffering, ^“But I know that my Redeemer lives,^,and at the end he will stand on the dust. Even after my skin has been destroyed, yet I will see God in my flesh.  I will see him myself; my eyes will look at him, and not as a stranger. My heart longs within me. (Job 19:25–27)