WHAT ABOUT SUFFERING?
by Mimi Rothschild 11/30/2011 / Education
by Mimi Rothschild
How can I trust God when He allows tragedy?
How can He be trusted when there is so much suffering He could stop in an instant?
The Bible tells us to "Be content with all the suffering that God may lay upon you." If you will love Him purely, you will be as willing to follow Him wherever He leads.
Do not act, then, like those people who give themselves at one time, and take themselves back at another. They give themselves to be caressed, and take themselves back when they are crucified; or else they seek for consolation only when they need Him..
You can only find consolation in the love of the cross and in complete abandonment. He who has no love for the cross has no love for God (Matt.16:24). It is impossible to love God without loving the cross; and a heart which has learned to love the cross finds sweetness, joy, and pleasure even in the bitterest things. "To the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet" (Prov.27: 7), because it is as hungry for the cross as it is hungry for God.
The cross gives God, and God gives the cross. Abandonment and the cross go together. As soon as you are sensible that something is repugnant to you which presents itself to you in the light of suffering, abandon yourself at once to God for that very thing, and present yourself as a sacrifice to Him: you will see that, when the cross comes, it will have lost much of its weight, because you will desire it. This will not prevent your being sensible of its weight. Some people imagine that it is not suffering to feel the cross. The feeling of suffering is one of the principal parts of suffering itself. Jesus Himself was willing to suffer it in its intensity.
Often the cross is borne with weakness, at other times with strength: all should be equal in the will of God.
For more on this subject, look for future articles in this series. The author has suffered the ultimate tragedy of losing two sons in two seperate ways fourteen years apart. She understands tragedy and still trusts God with all of her heart.
Mimi Rothschild is the co-founder of Learning By Grace (http://www.LearningbyGrace.org) a Christian ministry that offers Online HomeSchooling Programs for PreK-12.
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