forewordtosuffering

FOREWORD

It seems that there are many resources on the subject of suffering and disappointment with God’s answer to our prayers, and included in those are many wise sayings immediately pertinent to the point. They are often put in a clever and meaningful way and they do add a sharp and concise message on the subject. I am grateful to have gathered and used some of those authors and many pithy sayings to stimulate my own thoughts.

However, nothing that I have read in the literature, in my faith on the subject of suffering, with reference to Job and other suffering worthies in Scripture, or any other literature by those outside that faith, has hit the gnawing spot in my heart and the disappointment I so keenly felt over pain which has occurred in my life at different times. In that regard I have tried to put together something that does help me. I hope it will help others who are also searching.

There are some ideas on God’s responses to His people in the Old and New Testaments with some discussion on the different methods God used to inform about His purpose, and to punish wickedness and sin. It also seems imperative to understand that God’s son came not to do miracles and healing with big power displays, but to grow faithful men through unhealed suffering.

As well, the question of large scale suffering in racial or national trauma is discussed where many people seemingly suffer to the end without relief. There is an attempt to answer that, and to show how God might work with His people to bring about more people to His name and purpose. It can then be better understood how the wholesale and national suffering, which some people go through, is never relieved, and from which they die terrible deaths. In their dying, still bound by bonds of evil, there are some precious souls who, rising above the evil, ask, Christ like, that the evil ones are forgiven. God cares less for winning causes than He does for winning men, and sometimes the former is sacrificed for the cause of the latter. But in that endless suffering, it is a fact that God remembers the fruits of goodness derived from the ill will of the evil ones. There is a greatness of heart which grows out of that evil, in the prayers of those that suffer. May it be that importuning, and the fruit that has been borne from the suffering, will be the forgiveness of the evil ones.

As needs be, there is a discussion on the incomprehensible measures God uses in our suffering and on the disappointing “no” answer. That is caused by a misunderstanding, where our measure is quite different to His measure, a state which is hard for us to grasp in our mortal being.

There are 27 one page discussions, not dependent on one another and sometimes with repeating pertinent points. But each one works through a set program of understanding, where hopefully we can grow in faith and hope, piece by piece, to appreciate tragedy and suffering.

I have reaped more than I sowed in putting down these thoughts. Green pastures have replaced the desert, and there is still water, when there was groaning and a flooded torrent. I am restored by His shepherding rod and staff for my forward journey. My cup is overflowing with goodness and now I am drinking, as the song says, from my saucer.

I am blessed that as the Lord speaks to me, that I may speak, and as He fills me with His fullness and my heart overflows, then I may also tell of His overflowing love to praise Him.

There are supplementary works to this on “Suffering -Through the Apparent Silence of God” available from the same author, entitled “Travelling Through Tragedy, Carrying Burdens and Managing Life’s Unavoidable Sadness” and “Forgiveness and Reconciliation” and the work “Kith and Kin”, “The stories of Genesis, A Consideration of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph”, 600 pages.

**************************

>> #1 About suffering