He is the answer and we need him

“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” [No Man Is An Island, p. 94].

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 Eareckson Tada and Steve Estes, When God Weeps, p. 168)