Wednesday, April 04, 2012

Sufferable Suffering

What makes suffering insufferable is not so much the pain involved as the feeling that God doesn't care.  We picture him lounging in a celestial armchair, indifferent to the sufferings of the world.  It is this slanderous caricature of God that the cross smashes to smithereens.  We are to see him not on a comfortable chair but on a cross.  For the God who allows us to suffer once suffered himself in Jesus Christ, and he continues to suffer with us today.  There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over that mark we boldly stamp another mark- the cross.

-Stott, in today's reading at page 267, Through the Bible Through the Years.  The primary scripture reference is Romans 5:8:  "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

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