You Don't Always Get What You Want

You don’t always get what you want. I know you know that. And I tell my kids that often. What do I want? My healthy baby, of course, who comes home with me from the hospital and lives a charmed life with no pain or suffering.

Suffering.

We can’t escape it. As Christians we often experience more of it.

Many minds much more brilliant than my own have grappled with this question of suffering. I really don’t grapple all that much. When Noel died, I was angry with God (which is okay, He can handle it). This time around, I accept that suffering is part of life and I am not exempt.
I explain it to my children this way. When Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, when they refused God’s truth and chose their own, sin entered the world. We say that man fell (from pure communion with God), but really the entire world did. Creation and all of mankind with it was broken. Our hearts, our bodies, our genes. Decay enters. Death enters. There are now tornadoes and earthquakes and blight and famine and cancer and babies who don’t grow correctly. But through all this, God had a plan. His own Son, who was with Him at the creation of the world, would put on flesh and move into the neighborhood and become fully man and fully God. And He came to suffer greatly on our behalf, so we could be with Him forever. So we could be redeemed. So He could wipe away our tears and make all the sad things come undone. So He could restore us and our world, so He could make us whole and new and perfect. So we could live with Him forever.

Lately I’ve been drawn to the image of the crucifix. Protestants, we tend to focus on the cross. The empty cross. And thank God it is empty, that Jesus rose and gave us the hope of life eternal. But Jesus was there, on that cross, where He suffered excruciatingly. Why is there so much pain and suffering in our world, and what is the meaning of it? I don’t have all those answers, but if Jesus cared enough to suffer alongside us, to really be a Man and deal with all our pain and brokenness, there must be a reason. That’s enough for me.

If you want more theological answers or historical proofs for Jesus or arguments for apologetics, there are great resources out there. I’ve read a lot of them. For me, it is enough that Jesus came and suffered and died and defeated death and sin forever so I could be restored to Him. Hallelujah, what a Savior!

P.S. If you haven’t read the Bible before or in a long time, a great place to start is with the Jesus Storybook Bible. It is one of our favorite children’s Bibles and it is great for adults, too! This retelling of the Great Story is a beautiful one.