Why Do We Suffer? Part 1 Posted by Bubbly89 , Tuesday, January 18, 2011 at 1:45 PM, in

After recent encounters with lots of people who were angry for having lost their loved ones, and being asked why God allows this kind of things to happen to them. This is the very question that got most of my friends and me buffled. No one knows how to explain. So I started following a reading plan in my study bible that has the heading of "Why do we suffer?" So, I just want to really understand and possibly share with people what I've come to understand little by little.

Book of Tobit
In this book, it talks about how Tobit and Sarah suffered. In the story, the faithful Tobit, who is blinded after doing a good deed, and the virtuous Sarah, who is ridiculed because she has had seven husbands die on their wedding nigh, pray for death because of their suffering and humiliation. People may ask, what was the advantage of following God's law if all they had to look forward to was more suffering. But actually, God does eventually reward: it was just a matter of time.

Tobit Chapter 3
When Tobit and Sarah prayed that they may be set free from their suffering, God heard their prayers and sent Raphael to hel them. Despite how much we suffer, God hears us by our prayers and God will never abandon us but rather will show us His ultimate saving grace and love by making even better things happen in our future. No one can completely explain the mystery of why we suffer. But through our loving actions and prayers, we can support one another in our suffering.

Job 1:13-21
There are times we felt so angry at the loss of somethign that we cursed and swore to God. There are times we felt like just giving up on God because our loss. In the book of Job, a man named Job experiences an unimaginable loss. His children, his home, and his property are all destroyed at the same time. Job responds with great anger and great pain, but instead of cursing and blaming God, he blesses (praises) God. Job never loses his faith in God, even when he loses so much else. Through most of the rest of this book, he struggles to understand why this has to happen to him. When faced with great suffering, he does not lose his belief in the goodness of God, nor does he let his friends talk him into false confession of sinfulness. Like Job, we must not fall into the trap of thinking that when bad things happen, God is punishing us. But then again, then we end us with the question why we suffer right? The thing I've learnt is that God is too "big" for us to understand, His ways are not our ways, we have to trust in the Lord and just take our suffering as part of a mystery.


The above comments were found in my study bible. No copyrights intended.