MONDAY Job 1:20-22, 42:1-8
Suffering has always raised deep spiritual questions. The poetic drama of Job probably took final form some 750 years before Christ, but its roots seem to go back much earlier. The book taught that we can’t always explain suffering. It showed Job struggling with great pain and loss, and in the end finding lasting trust in a God bigger and wiser than he was.
• Who do you think causes suffering? Some think Job 1:21 meant God caused Job’s agony. That doesn’t fit the story. Job 2:7 says the accuser (“Satan”) wrecked Job’s life. Job’s friends, not he, said God punished him (Job 4:9, 8:3). What 1:21 conveyed is that, come what may, Job trusted God’s eternal love. To what extent can you share that trust?
• In chapter 42, Job saw that he needed more than the “why” answers he asked God for (which never came). God said Job’s friends’ answers had “not spoken rightly” (Job 42:7). Have well-meaning friends ever given glib explanations of your suffering? How can God’s caring presence with you help more than any explanation?
TUESDAY John 16:33-17:11, 14-17
John writes that, on the night before he went to the cross, Jesus told his followers, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” His prayer asked God to protect his followers, not from all difficulty or pain, but rather from “the evil one” who would seek to use suffering to rob them of their trust in God.
• Like Job’s friends, many in Jesus’ day and ours feel (maybe subconsciously) that “being good” is a kind of “suffering insurance.” Jesus didn’t see it that way. How do you react to his direct words: “in this world you will have trouble”? How can you live into the flip side of Jesus’ words—to “take heart” because he’s overcome the world?
WEDNESDAY Romans 8:18-28
Suffering was almost constant in Paul’s life as an apostle (see 2 Corinthians 11:23-29). But he viewed his suffering in a way that gave him strength and hope. First, he knew he was not alone or unique in suffering. (Creation suffers, and even the Holy Spirit groans with us.) What’s more, he said, God can bend even our suffering to serve good purposes.
• There is mystery and comfort in verse 26: “We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.” When have you faced so much pain that you felt “speechless” before God? How does it affect you to read that, at those very hardest times, God’s Spirit intercedes on your behalf?
THURSDAY Romans 8:31-39
• Paul did not write his answers to most of his rhetorical questions here, but it’s evident what he had in mind. Read the passage aloud, and insert your name when the text says “us” or “we.” When you hear the value God places on you, how does this shape the value you place on yourself? Choose hourly to live into God’s view of you.
FRIDAY Zephaniah 3:14-20
In Romans 8, we saw that Paul clung to God’s love in the present, but looked to the future for God’s final answer to suffering. This was a part of his prophetic heritage. The little-known prophet Zephaniah wrote at about the same time as Jeremiah. Even before Babylon overran Jerusalem, he looked beyond Israel’s coming suffering and exile, and found hope.
• When the day to rejoice came, Zephaniah told the Israelites, they would not sing alone. In the lovely imagery of verse 17, he promised they would hear God’s voice singing with them, rejoicing over them. Have you internalized the truth that God delights in you? How does it shape your view of life that God rejoices over you “with singing”?
SATURDAY Revelation 21:1-5
Like Zephaniah’s, Revelation’s vision ended not with plague, disaster and suffering, but with a world made new. Death, mourning, crying and pain were of the old order. “I am making everything new!” the Creator and Redeemer cried in triumph. The prophet still faced a world of hatred and suffering, so God added that “these words are trustworthy and true.”
• In Les Miserables, after the idealistic students die at the barricade, a group of women sing, in despair, “Nothing changes—nothing ever will.” 2 Peter 3:3-9 said skeptics say that about the hope of God making all things new: “everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” But look at the end of apartheid and Jim Crow laws, child labor law reforms advances in medicine, and much more. Can you dare to dream that it’s true, that God will “make all things new”? In what day-to-day ways does hope change your life for the better?