I recently read GRIEVING A SUICIDE by Hsu. It was a gift from my brother and offered insights into the recent loss of our beloved Zane. (See post Jan. 2, 2010) As you might imagine it was an emotionally difficult read. However, with a new series at TheBOD called "WHY?" coming soon the book served as a great primer for thought.
One particular section discussed God's suffering on our behalf. Perhaps it will help you see through a different lens when you are tempted to approach God shaking your fist. Oh how He loves us. The highlights below have enabled me to picture our God "aching" along with us as we journey in a broken creation. I find great comfort in the thought that not only does He work all things for the good of those who love him but that He also "knows our suffering". Not in some "I have a bigger picture that you don't get" way. Rather, in a true, empathetic "I've walked and I'm still walking this path with you... I ache with you. I hurt with you. This grieves me too..." way.
Perhaps it will serve you well. Hsu writes:
Ref: Grieving a Suicide by Albert Y. Hsu (Pg. 119-121)
The problem of pain and suffering cannot be “solved by mere philosophical reasoning or speculation. It is not answered by glib clichés about hypothetical purposes or meanings behind the suffering. The solution is personal, not philosophical. The personal solution is that God himself experiences suffering through the person of Jesus. When words cannot comfort, the Word who became pierced flesh speaks to us out of his own pain and agony. Because he was betrayed, tortured and abandoned, God understands our feelings of betrayal, torture and abandonment. In Jesus, God approached humanity and took his stand with us. He suffered at the hands of the world just as we do…
One of my favorite writers is the British biblical scholar John Stott. In his magnum opus The Cross of Christ he probes the relationship between human suffering and the cross. Stott notes that while the cross is symbolic of such concepts as perseverance and service, the most profound meaning of the cross is the pain of God. “The Cross of Christ is proof of God’s solidary love,” Stott writes, “that is, of his personal, loving solidarity with us in our pain.” God is not oblivious to our cries of suffering. “We are not to envisage him on a deck-chair, but on a cross. The God who allows us to suffer, once suffered himself in Christ, and continues to suffer with us and for us today.” [14] …
“I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross,” concludes Stott. “In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?” The God worthy of worship is not some impassive smiling Buddha but the bleeding man on the cross. “That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in light of his.” [17] …
C.S. Lewis concluded that God’s seeming absence during grief is simply because of the traumatic nature of grief. “The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just the time when God can’t give it: you are like the drowning man who can’t be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear.” [20] …
[14] John R. W. Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1986), p.329.
[17] Stott, Cross of Christ, pp. 335-336
[20] Lewis, Grief Observed, pp. 63-64
