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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