Suffering ~

Everyone suffers what some have called “the dark night of the soul” at some point in their lives. It can happen when a tragedy strikes or when you just feel that God isn’t listening. Saints have written about this experience! Jesus was probably experiencing this on the cross when he quoted psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me!” The above psalm also expresses what it feels like to be abandoned. It also reflects the same confidence that just as God has saved us in the past; he will be there in the present and in the future. It can be easy to give up hope. Remember the story of Job. His friends kept telling him that believing in a good God was foolishness. The more that he defended God, the more his friends kept working on him to blame God for his problems. We may have friends who do the same thing. We may have friends who don’t believe in God or who think that God punishes us by allowing bad things to happen. It can be difficult to maintain our faith and believe that God is with us through the sufferings rather than being the cause of them. Rather than listening to these “friends” we need to remember the times when we have felt this way before, and remember how God was with us then. It is important for us to take stock each day of how God has been present to us. If we do this on a regular – daily – basis, then when the dark times or dark hours hit, we will be better prepared to trust in the love of God and his presence walking with us.