The question is often asked, "If there is a God, a loving, merciful God, why does He allow people to suffer? How can He allow humans to experience the terrible accidents, illnesses, crime, wars and troubles that are so common in this world every day? Doesn't He care?"
God does care
He knows when humans suffer. He is God. His perspective is infinitely greater than ours. He sees the "bigger picture" - that our experiences as mortal humans, however painful or unhappy, will be to our eventual benefit.
When a parent takes an infant to the doctor for a regular vaccination to prevent some childhood disease, it's because the parent cares for and loves that child. The young child however will almost always see things very differently. When the doctor's needle goes into that little arm, the child will often cry out and howl from the pain. It may look up at the parent, with those big innocent eyes, in the most pleading and pitiful way, as if to say, "Look at the horrible thing that's happening to me! Don't you care about my terrible suffering? How can you just stand there and allow this to go on? Don't you love me?"
The parent however knows better. He or she is aware that everything is going to be all right in a very short time (even though it almost always has an emotional impact on the parent to see the child distressed in such a way). A minor, brief pain is the price the child pays for a healthier life later.
God's Good Will in the Midst of Suffering
Just as an infant cannot possibly understand the motives of its parent while it is still only a child, so too we cannot appreciably comprehend God's will for us while we are still as we are. It's a matter of perspective - the brief few years of a physical human lifetime, versus the eternity, time without end, that will follow.
God is our ultimate parent. He knows all about the problems we often have, but He also knows that our experiences with pain and suffering, along with all of the good experiences that we may have, will, help mould us into the kind of person that God wants us to be.
God's Offer of Life, Christ
God is not about to willingly abandon any of His children for whom the price of life has been paid. Loss will only occur as the result of a knowing, deliberate refusal to accept God's offer of life,
Jesus Christ Himself, who died for our sins, even though He had lived a perfectly sinless life, and had committed no crime, was brutally beaten, flogged and crucified in great agony.
Let's remember that even the longest human life is merely like a single grain of sand on the infinite beach of the eternal life to come. After we have become immortal, even a century of the worst human pain and suffering would seem to us as almost insignificant, a momentary jab with a vaccination needle, and we will surely be the better for having experienced it.
A Day Where There Will Be No More Suffering
It records in the last book of the bible, Revelation 21:3-4
3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes.There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
Suffering on earth will only be temporary. There will be a day when God will wipe every tear off our eyes. There will be no more death, mourning, crying or pain. Let's fix our eyes and faith upon Christ, who endured the greatest suffering for us that we have the hope of eternal paradise, a new heaven and earth when sufferings will be no more.
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