Once upon a time, back in the Garden of Eden, there was a man named Adam, and a woman named Eve. They lived a life without sin, until the day they bit from the forbidden fruit. Then, sin entered in.

Why did God allow this? Simple, he allowed Adam and Eve to make their own choices. God isn’t a dictator, he doesn’t say, “You have to believe in me!!” In stead, he allows us to make choices. In doing so, we must suffer for our wrong choice. Adam and Eve bit the fruit, they then had to leave Eden and learn how to grow their own food, have painful childbirths… To bring this down on a smaller scale, think of parents. When a kid makes a wrong choice such as, lying to his folks, he must suffer the punishment. When his folks find out, he will be punished. In the same way, when we decide to do something God isn’t happy about, he will punish us.

Why then do those who didn’t do anything wrong suffer?

Often times God will allow us to go through suffering so that we will remember He is always there for us, and to help us build up our relationship with him. You may go through a death, sickness, fight, break up, or maybe even just a really bad grade on a test u thought for sure u did well on! Even through all this suffering, God is still there. Often times it’s hard to see that though because we are so caught up in what’s going wrong, that we tend to push God away. It always seems to make things worse though.

Even when we do turn to God, we may still suffer some more before it’s finally over. My youth pastor gave the example of a bear in a trap and a hunter who shows pity on him. The hunter feels bad for the bear and wants to get him out, but the bear things the hunter will hurt him. In order for the hunter to get him out, he must push him a little further into the trap. The bear feels more and more pain and decides that there is no way the hunter is helping him. And the hunter goes through all this trouble to try to help the bear, but unless the bear cooperates, it won’t get lose. Because the bear isn’t human, he can’t understand the hunter’s full purpose for giving the bear such pain.

God is like that hunter. We get caught in a trap, and it hurts. Sometimes, in order for us to get out, God will have us go through a little more. It’s hard for us to understand all the suffering though because we aren’t God, so we don’t fully understand his intentions. The only way we can know for sure that he’ll help us out is by reading his word and praying. We must get to know him better to understand a little more about him. Then we must believe he will help us and cooperate with him, not try to run from him, or make him do what we want.

Another thing I’d like to point out while I’m on the topic of suffering is: Without suffering, Christ wouldn’t have died for our sins. He had to be crucified on the cross, and bare the burden of our sins along with the pain of being on the cross. That’s more suffering than any of us will have in a lifetime.

If Christ can suffer through that, I think we can handle the suffering that we have in our own lives. Think of these sufferings as a peek hole. They allow you to feel a wee bit of what Christ had to go through.