Seasons of Suffering

WRITTEN BY REV. DR. JOHN WATERS

According to popular Christian author Max Lucado, “A season of suffering is a small price to pay for a clear view of God.”1 It doesn’t take long in life to encounter a season of suffering, as the flowers of heartache and hardship spring up regularly in our family, health, and personal lives.

But do dark seasons and difficult moments really give us a clearer picture of God? And have you ever wondered why bad things happen to good people?

A quick observation of life quickly shows us that people who deserve suffering the least often encounter it the most. Good and godly people face trials and hardships that are unexplainable, and our minds search aimlessly for answers, like grasping for the wind.

In the Gospel of John, when Jesus’s disciples saw the man who was blind from birth, their question reflected their lack of understanding about pain and suffering. “Who sinned,” they asked, “this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

Jesus responds that the blindness of the man was the result neither of his sin nor of his parents, “but that the works of God should be revealed in him.” After he spits on the ground, Jesus mysteriously makes clay with the saliva and rubs it on the eyes of the blind man, who then goes to the pool of Siloam to wash and receive his sight.

More than a magic trick, this miracle was an opportunity for Jesus to reveal the greatness and glory of God, during hardship and suffering. The healed man became a walking and witnessing testimony of Jesus’s power, even responding to the Pharisees’ doubts later by declaring, “Whether He is a sinner or not I do not know. One thing

I know: that though I was blind, now I see.”

In this simple but profound story, Jesus is teaching why sometimes God allows suffering. The longstanding question of why a good God would allow bad things to happen is puzzling to us, and the tension it causes it not easily resolved. But pain is often a place for God to exhibit his power and grace, so that we become living testimonies of those who trust unreservedly in the Lord, regardless of circumstances.

Like a diamond made more brilliant by viewing it against a dark velvet pad, the beauty of God’s sustaining grace shines more brightly in the dark places of pain. Low valleys and difficult moments are unwanted places for any of us, but we learn to trust God in those places more than we do on the mountain tops.

As you journey through pain, your life becomes a story of God’s strength, presence, and unfailing love. The broken and wounded places of your life become scars that remind people of God’s sufficiency. As one Christian author wrote, “Like the spine of a good book, scars, by their very nature, imply there’s a story to tell.”2

None of us desires to walk through the scars and brokenness of pain, but our time of suffering becomes a canvas upon which God can paint a beautiful portrait of his sufficiency and grace. Our sovereign God permits pain and hardship, but he sees things we do not see and knows things we do not know. He does not give us answers, but he gives us himself.

David, the shepherd boy who became king, knew this when writing his famous Psalm 23, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff comfort me.” We would do well to remember the pithy phrase: If God leads you to the valley, he will lead you through the valley, too. During the dark, difficult valleys of life, we find that God himself is leading and guiding us.

Seasons of suffering are times to listen and learn from God, leaning upon his goodness and promise that he will never leave us nor forsake us. We learn things about God during pain we simply cannot learn any place else. We see his beauty, and we feel his strength. His grace shines brightly, and his promises never fail.

I think Max Lucado is correct: A season of suffering is a small price to pay for a clear view of God. S