Bitterness and Simple Faith

She realized her seething hatred was just as heinous, just as nauseating as the sins committed against her. She was no better than her parents. As surely as her father thrust himself on her, she had in her imagination, thrust a knife, with hot fury, into his chest. Glenda could have easily been the one flinging curses and spitting hatred, torturing and nailing God to his cross. In fact, in acknowledging her sin, she was. The memory of spit on her seven-year-old face must have paled in comparison to the spit on her Savior. Glenda discovered, as few believers do, the depth of God’s love in that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

“In order to suffer without dwelling on our own affliction” Thomas Merton once contemplated, “we must think about a greater affliction, and turn to Christ on the cross. In order to suffer without hate, we must drive out bitterness from our heart by loving Jesus. In order to suffer without hope of compensation, we should find all our peace in the conviction of our union with Jesus. These things are not a matter of ascetic technique but of simple faith.”

God suffering on a cross. There is no answer to the question “Why?” apart from Jesus. That God is part of the problem of suffering may not complicate matters after all. How, or to what extent, he created the problem, is not the question.

He is the answer and we need him.

(Joni Ereckson Tada and Steve Estes, When God Weeps, p. 167-168)