what do i do with what i have been given...?

the condition of human suffering has long been debated in christian circles...and when the suffering falls on a tiny child, it makes even less sense to people who believe in a loving God...

do i believe God willed that my friends precious baby boy would suffer just so He could teach them more about His love? and when friends told them they felt that timmy had been born to the "right" parents, were they explaining away a choice they felt God had made? were they saying that God consciously decided to "reward" their family with a handicapped child?

it is never the will of God for anyone to suffer. God does not cause suffering, and He does not make little children grow up in bodies that are broken and weak...

sometimes adults bring pain and suffering on themselves by disobeying the rules of nature and not caring for themselves and their physical bodies...sometimes human carelessness causes pain and suffering, as in automobile accidents...and sometimes living in a finite and imperfect world results in illness and suffering...our bodies interact with many influences...both genetic and environmental...mortality is a fact of life...but none of these things reflect God's justice...as i understand it...

how then can a loving Creator allow us to live in a world where we daily face cancer, death, disease, fear, and pain? time after time we have all been a part of a caring group that has prayed long and hard for a cure or a recovery...only to have ultimately lost the battle and experienced illness and death anyway...how can this be?

does God have a weekly quota of illnesses to distribute and selectively bestow on the people "most likely to succeed"?

i can never believe that! instead, i feel the world is set up in a way in which both good and evil are at work...both wellness and sickness exist...both sadness and happiness are available for our taking...pain is a natural part of life...germs, viruses, amd malignant tumors are a part of the real world...when we are alive in an imperfect world, we have to take all the good and bad together...life is not fair...and this is where the love of God comes in...

through the grace of our loving God, we can move beyond the question of "why?" and move instead to the question of "what do i do with what i have been given?" this is the meaning of being human, created in the image of God...we are free to make positive choices that can take a very bad situation and turn it into an opportunity for experiencing His grace, His strength, His presence, and His love...

suffering can help us explore the limits of our capacity for knowing God; it leads us to discover our own depths of perseverance and strength...as we begin to see our tragedy in the context of a mostly good life, we can begin to know God...

the love of God exists in its strongest and purest form in the very midst of suffering and tragedy...we do not love God because He protects us from all sorrow and all harm...we love Him because loving Him makes us better and stronger in sorrow and pain...we love Him because He is the source of our hope and courage in an imperfect world...

God did not cause timmy's disability...it happened because we live in a world of imperfection and defects...but His infinite mercy has led my friends, timmy's parents, hour by hour...day by day...month by month to new depths of coping...

God works with us where we are and helps us move toward where we can be...