Suffering

 Lent has this way of slowing us down, pulling us toward the questions we might otherwise rush past. And this year, I find myself circling around one in particular: What do we do with suffering?

Christians are called to care for those who suffer, to bind up wounds and sit in the ashes with the brokenhearted. But there’s something more to it—something that the theology of suffering asks of us. It suggests that we cannot truly walk alongside those in pain unless we have known pain ourselves. It’s not just an intellectual exercise. It’s lived.

Now, let’s be clear: I do not believe that God causes suffering. And most who study the theology of suffering would agree. God is good. All the time. He is not in the business of dealing with pain like some divine bureaucrat. God is the very definition of goodness, incapable of anything less than love.

But—and here’s the part that’s harder to swallow—God does not always take suffering away. Instead, God makes a way through it. He is present in it. And, somehow, in the middle of all that hurt, we find that suffering has softened us, shaped us into people more capable of offering comfort to others.

Julian of Norwich, the 14th-century mystic who knew sickness and loss all too well, saw suffering not as a divine punishment but as a door to deeper love. She wrote that through suffering, we could learn to “love God better and longer.” She believed that hardship could expand our hearts, and stretch them toward something more.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I do not like suffering. Not one bit. Whether it’s a nagging cold or a devastating diagnosis, I’d rather pass. But suffering finds us anyway. And when it does, the question isn’t just why. It’s what now?

I think Julian was onto something. Suffering isn’t redemptive in and of itself, but it can be transformed. It can push us toward love, toward justice, toward solidarity. When we link our Lenten practices—prayer, fasting, giving—to a theology of suffering that does not glorify pain but seeks to redeem it, we see a faith that makes space for both sorrow and hope. A faith that does not look away. A faith that insists, even in the hardest moments, that love will have the last word.

Blessing Rev. Kim