“I DON’T KNOW WHY I HAVE SO MANY CHALLENGES IN LIFE, BUT I DO KNOW AND BELIEVE THAT NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS GOD LOVES ME!”

Here are some the things we can say as Orthodox Christians about the will of God and suffering.

  1. God came into the world in the person of Jesus not to inflict evil, suffering and death upon us but to overcome them. “In the World you have tribulation but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world,” said Jesus. Call many things evil, call them inevitable because of sin, but don’t call them the will of God.
  2. We could understand God’s will better if we did not always expect him to do things our way. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, said the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9)
  3. We can say that when we suffer God shares our sorrow and grief. As a little boy who had been badly burned said when a woman said of him, “Oh, why does God punish a child like that?” “Don’t say that,” the child called out. “Don’t say anything bad about God! When it hurts, God cries with me!?” that boy’s theology was absolutely orthodox!
  4. We can say that Jesus who overcame death for us has it in His power to make it up to those who are taken away too soon by death. This is not the only life. There is eternity ahead of us. There is more life ahead- infinitely more! The life that is taken away too soon will get its chance to blossom and flourish. God will redress the wrongs of this world. He will balance the books. “If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied” (I Cor.15:19)Praise and Worship At St Barnabas Orthodox Mission
  5. We can say that God is powerful enough to help us use even the evil things that happen to us for our good, just as He took the worse that man could do to Him – the suffering and death of the cross- and turned it into the best that ever happened to us- our salvation. “ We know that in everything God works for our good with those who love Him, who are called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28).
  6. We can say that although much sorrow and suffering are traceable to human error and human sin, there still remains much that we simply cannot explain. We simply have to say, “ I don’t know why this happened, but I do know and believe that no matter what happens God loves me. He will not leave me or forsake me. He will give me the power to bear this cross and even to transform it so that the tragedy becomes a crown.

At St Barnabas Orthodox Mission Centre, This Is What We Teach The Children….. , “I DON’T KNOW WHY I HAVE SO MANY CHALLENGES IN LIFE, BUT I DO KNOW AND BELIEVE THAT NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS GOD LOVES ME!”