By Emily Mendez
Connecting Faith and Life
We experience joy with good times. We dream about the future and enjoy the fruits of our success with family, friends or co-workers. Everything goes well — until it doesn’t. A diagnosis, an accident, a work-related issue, a difficult relationship, a tragedy, the loss of a loved one — something unexpected changes our lives from joy to suffering.
Suffering is one of the greatest challenges of walking with God. Many people have walked out the doors of the Church because they cannot understand a God that allows suffering. Indeed, suffering is a great mystery; not in the crime novel sense of “mystery” but in the Catholic sense of “mystery.” It is something we can know, but never fully understand. We may have an easier time with suffering that comes as a result of our own bad decisions, but the questions become much harder when we are confronted with “innocent” suffering, especially involving children. How do we understand a God that is all-good, all-powerful, all-loving and allows evil to exist?
Perhaps more than any other, the book of Job from the Bible confronts this question and helps us wrestle with it. Job is a righteous man who walks with the Lord and has many blessings in his life. God allows Satan to strip Job of everything — his family, possessions and health. Three friends come to visit Job and sit with him in silence in a beautiful display of friendship. Then, they ruin it when they start to speak. They collectively say Job must have done something wrong because God is punishing him. Job sends them away and turns to confront God head-on. God responds with a lengthy speech (Job 38-41). In his response, God takes Job on a tour of his cosmos and challenges Job’s understanding of his ways. Everything is under the providence of God. Remarkably, God does not give Job an answer to his suffering, but he puts Job’s suffering into a greater context of all of God’s providence, which is beyond Job’s understanding.
When we are in the pain of suffering, we tend to narrow our focus to the immediate circumstances that are causing the pain. When God speaks to Job, he expands the context and highlights for Job that there is so much complexity he does not see or understand. God invites Job to trust his goodness and his faithfulness within this complexity of managing the entire universe. Job gets the point and responds humbly to God. Remarkably, Job says, “By hearsay I had heard of you, but now my eye has seen you” (Job 42:5). God himself walked with Job and instructed him. Job was able to see God as he really is in contrast to his friends who spoke of God with an inaccurate concept of who God is. For Job, there was no mediator, it was only he and God in intimate conversation and revelation of truth that led Job to know things for what they are. Job’s suffering was not gone, but in his humility, his heart was changed.
Our temptation is to get rid of suffering. The world offers many options. Many people get lost in drugs or alcohol, but also in more subtle distractions like watching TV or scrolling social media. Instead of striving to numb the pain or distract from it, we need to embrace it and go from saying “I’m fine” to “I’m suffering right now.” Everyone’s road with suffering is different, but when we allow ourselves to see God walking with us amid our suffering, like Jesus with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and when we let him speak, we might experience that peace that surpasses all understanding. We also might be able to say with Job: my eye has seen you. The pain causing our suffering might not go away, but the vision of God himself will put all in perspective.
God is with you amid your suffering. You can make a simple prayer like: “Allow me to see You, that I will allow You to speak, help me to hear, and give me your peace.” Everyone’s road with suffering is different, but when we sit with God in prayer, in honesty, truth and with patience, we can receive what God wants to give. The key in our suffering, for Job and us, is to stick closely with God no matter what, not because he will give us answers, but because he gives us himself.