Why Does God Allow Suffering?
The hospital room was quiet except for the hum of machines and the soft breathing of a woman who had just lost her youngest son.
She didn’t scream. She didn’t throw things. She just looked at the ceiling and whispered four words that have echoed through every generation since the Garden: “Why, God? Just… why?”
If you’ve ever sat in that kind of silence. The kind that follows a diagnosis, a phone call at 2 a.m., or a casket that’s too small. You know that question doesn’t come from a textbook. It comes from a place so deep inside you that words almost can’t reach it.
So let me be honest with you before we go any further: I don’t have a tidy answer. And I’d be suspicious of anyone who does.
But I do know this. God never promised us a life without suffering. Jesus Himself said, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33). He didn’t say might. He said will. But He didn’t stop there. He finished the sentence: “But take heart, I have overcome the world.”
The Bible doesn’t dodge the question. Job lost everything. children, wealth, health, and the first thing his friends did was try to explain why. God’s response? He never gave Job a reason. He gave Job Himself. He showed up in the whirlwind and said, in essence, “I am bigger than your question. And I am closer than your pain.”
Paul understood this. The man was beaten, shipwrecked, stoned, and left for dead. And yet he wrote from a Roman prison cell: “Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Corinthians 4:17). Light and momentary? Paul, have you seen your résumé?
But Paul saw something we often miss. He saw the other side of the equation. He saw what suffering was producing. Not just endurance, but character. Not just character, but hope. And hope, Paul said, does not put us to shame (Romans 5:3-5).
Here’s what I’ve learned in over thirty years of ministry: God doesn’t always explain the storm. But He never leaves you in it alone. He doesn’t owe us an explanation. He gave us something better — Emmanuel. God with us. Right here. Right now. In the hospital room. In the silence. In the hurt that doesn’t have a name yet.
The woman in that hospital room? She told me something later that I’ll never forget. She said, “Pastor, I didn’t hear God give me an answer. But I felt Him sit down beside me.”
The psalmist wrote, “The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.” (Psalm 145:18) Don’t ever forget that.
Keep Looking Up!
May God bless your day.
Related devotionals: Why bad things happen to good people · When pain brings new beginning · When everything falls apart
Want more from Pastor Rodney?
If today’s devotional spoke to your heart, my books carry these same themes deeper. Stories of God moving in ordinary lives, scripture for tired pastors and weary parents, and steady reminders that heaven is closer than you think.