First of all, I hope you are feeling a bit better after an obvious experience of suffering in which you may still be feeling sad.

We often want a savior who removes suffering from our experience but what ends up happening is that we find that savior hanging from the cross!

It’s disappointing to many that God often doesn’t save us from experiences of suffering. Instead God values human freedom above controlling and micromanaging our lives.

Scripture tells us that suffering is the result of human choice and an imperfect world. With human freedom and our imperfect selves comes the risk of making a choice that hurts ourselves or others and other people’s choices having an effect on us or other innocent bystanders.

Jesus reminds us that God suffers with His people and chooses to intimately enter our human experience tangibly in the person of Jesus but also spiritually by suffering with us in our own sorrows. God doesn’t delight in our suffering, rather God retains the power to redeem our suffering to transform suffering into something greater and stronger and better than that single suffering experience.

God is with you in your suffering and perhaps if you look closely you can see God working through friends and other possibilities to bring you into healing.

May Holy Week provide you with comfort from the Savior who suffers with us.