Advent: Suffering
Not a week goes by without someone in our church family struggling with bereavement, physical and mental health difficulties, illness – not to mention the battle it is sometimes just to get through the day. If you’re anything like me, one of the most common prayers you pray is ‘Why, Lord, why?’ Job asks it twenty times as he suffers and doesn’t understand why.
In our Advent series we first reflected on anticipation and then patience last week, where I shared a verse from Romans 12.12: Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Paul knew the reality that life is a struggle – and that doesn’t change when we become Christians. God doesn’t whisk us away from his good but broken world, he doesn’t click his fingers and make our lives easy.
And nor does he explain. Some of the hardest unanswered prayers are the ones that begin, ‘Why…’ yet they are the ones that – in my experience at least – usually go unanswered.
The Bible gives us God’s answer to all our questions – often not the answer we want, but always the answer we need. We want to know, we want to see, we want to understand, but God says ‘No – Trust me – Take my hand.’ We want a detailed analysis, an explanation of why, but God says ‘Here’s my Son’.
Jesus – as human as you and me yet fully divine and without sin – knew weakness, temptation, hunger, thirst, tiredness, frustration. And he suffered. His friends ran away in his hour of need. His leaders falsely accused him. He was found guilty despite being proved innocent. He was mocked, brutally treated and painfully killed. And despite all that, the worst pain wasn’t physical but spiritual as the eternal Son of God was forsaken by the Father as he felt the full weight of our sin and willingly bore the punishment we deserve.
It might not be the answer we want, but the answer God gives when we cry, ‘Why?’ is ‘I know.’ He doesn’t simply know because he can see our pain, he knows because he feels our pain, has felt it for himself. God doesn’t respond with an essay but with a story – the true story – of his Son become a Man. That’s good though because I am not an essay: I am a person with a backstory. I don’t need good advice or an explanation – for even if I understood completely, I could do nothing about it.
I might want to understand, but if I’m honest what I need is someone to walk with me, sometimes even to carry me, to bring me home safely to my heavenly Father – because I can’t do this in my own strength.
Advent reminds us to look forward, not only to Christmas but to Jesus’ return. Then God will make an end of all death, pain, suffering and there will be no more tears. Then we will know, as we are fully known. Then we will see face to face.
That is then. For now God says: ‘Here is my Son, listen to him – you can trust him to bring you home.’