Trusting God in the Midst of Suffering: Can God Give us Bad?

 

But this I call to mind; therefore I have hope: The LORD’s loyal kindness never ceases; his compassions never end. They are fresh every morning; your faithfulness is abundant! “My portion is the Lord,” I have said to myself, so I will put my hope in him.  Lamentations 3:21-24

 Humanity, as a whole, likes to put things into boxes of good or bad. Love, peace, joy; those are good. Hate, anger, pain; those are bad. But are they? If God made them all, and uses them all for His perfect plan and purpose, cannot all things be good?

 This morning, I’ve been reflecting on the fact that, these days, people are quick to attribute blessing to God, but when it comes to suffering, at most they say, “God allows it.” They would not be willing to say that God could or would cause us harm. I wonder, though, if this is something we have devised for our own comfort instead of it being strictly biblical? Today our reading was Lamentations 3, written by the prophet Jeremiah as he wept bitterly over the destruction of Jerusalem, that he had tried desperately to save. He starts out this chapter in a very stark way:

א (Aleph) I am the man who has experienced affliction from the rod of his wrath. He drove me into captivity and made me walk in darkness and not light. He repeatedly attacks me, he turns his hand against me all day long. [Lam 3:1-3 NET]

 It goes on like this for many more verses. The “He” referenced in these verses is God. Jeremiah is stating that he is experiencing affliction from the rod of God’s wrath. He is being attacked by God and God’s hand has turned against him. That’s not how we like to picture God, is it? We want to see Him as our Savior, the one who rescues us from such attack, not the one who inflicts it. So, the question is, was it just Jeremiah’s perspective that God was against him, or was it the reality?

 I think, based on this chapter, that Jeremiah very much believed that this could be the case. In verse 32 he says, “Though he causes us grief, he then has compassion on us according to the abundance of his loyal kindness.” And then in verse 38, “Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that everything comes - both calamity and blessing?” Jeremiah very much attributes both his blessings and his suffering to God.

 This can cause some confusion, though, when we consider verses like Matthew 7:11, “If you then, although you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” I think it’s verses like this that have led to our “only good comes from God” mentality. But, I return to my earlier challenge, who are we to say something is good or bad? Who are we to say that the suffering we are experiencing is not good and therefore not from God? If it is a part of His plan, and He is using it for His glory, and our ultimate good, cannot anything be good? Yes, probably like you, I have instantly had several, awful scenarios pop into my mind that I cannot imagine attributing to God or calling good. I definitely don’t have this all worked out, but I think what God is trying to teach me today is, I am not the judge of what is good and what is bad. I don’t know better than Him. Furthermore, it is not for me to put Him in a box and say that this can be from Him but that cannot.

Here’s the Thing: Sometimes life doesn’t feel good. Sometimes the things that happen seem really, really bad. But we have to remember that we experience life through a very limited perspective. We don’t see all that goes into a situation, nor all that comes out of it. We don’t know who will be influenced by what we are going through. I’ll be honest, what I’ve been dealing with lately is a lot, but I have absolutely had the thought that if even one person comes to Christ because of it, it is all worth it. If my suffering can be used for His glory and possibly even drawing others to Himself, I’m all in. And I will, I hope rightly, attribute all of my circumstances to God, because I believe that He is in charge. I’m not going to believe that He was incapable of changing what I’m dealing with. I’m not going to say that it was out of His control, because it isn’t. I am where I’m at because this is where God wants me, and that makes it good, even if it doesn’t feel good right now.