How can we understand suffering, pain, abuse and what is our healthiest, most therapeutic reaction?

When a child is hurt, pained, hit, a parent usually suffers with the child. The parent immediately helps: kiss the hurt, band-aid, but if worse calls for help. Responders can relieve pain of the child, but the parent may continue to feel hurt, anger. Is it possible that the One who is the Ground of our being is a parent as Jesus taught? It is hard to grasp that the Eternal One is a parent who feels what the best of parents feel.

Why do we suffer? We live on a living, vibrant, moving planet. Have you seen pictures or read about the mid Atlantic rift? Several thousand feet undersea chimneys several feet tall spout what looks like smoke, but is heat and chemicals from within the earth amidst the tectonic plates. Our planet home is a wild place with wild weather and chaotic events. Is this the nature of a living planet or some god throwing dice?

We live lives subject to disease and epidemics. We drive cars that weigh four tons a few feet away from other cars weighing a fourth as much, do we know what happens if they touch? We know thousands die yearly in auto and bike wrecks. Disease, wrecks, death happen and we hate it! Yet we let — or encourage — our children to play video games in which they kill and destroy, but do we wonder how that conditions their attitudes? Research has shown the effects! Some children are abused, and may want to get even against authority figures. Do you know that in a prison the hundreds convicted of rape had all been sexually abused as boys? And we ask why people are victimized. We ask why a good God lets these things happen. Or should we ask why we let them happen?

Dare we heed the words of Hebrew prophets and Jesus about how much God cares for children, and how much he expects of his people to alleviate and prevent hurt, pain, tragedy? This God is not omnipotent or omniscient, but a God who feels and cares and loves! Our relation to this God is somewhat like insurance we carry against tragedy; the insurance does not prevent tragedy — though some can help us prevent it — but insurance gives us the resources to rebuild out of the wreckage. Read Proverbs 8 for a hint of how God wants to work with us to build and rebuild. Did God lead Jesus to be a carpenter because they build and rebuild? Does this unique God want us to think of a Carpenter-God? Trust in his rebuilding grace!