Why?

Question:  "Why do bad things happen to good people?"

Answer:  I have none.


I sit here now living the good.  Snacking on Starburst, sitting on padded chair in comfortable house, driving white mini van, rising with three beautiful, healthy children every morn, sleeping next to strong, working husband between Egyptian cotton sheets every night.  Life now is good.  Trouble and tragedy have visited here before and they will come again, but their visits have been short. 


Still the question remains as my heart aches for others who have been valley walking lately.  Why does the sweet young family get the cancer diagnosis of their one year old babe?  Why do father and five year old die on the water leaving lonely, widowed mother behind?  Why do car accidents come hard and fast, shaking the brain and changing the life?


I've heard many answers to the question - that's just life.  When sin entered the Garden it brought with it destruction, pain, sorrow, death.  Hurting is a part of living and the hurting comes to all, good or bad. 


But why would a good God allow suffering?  He allows it to refine us.  The purest gold is heated in the fiercest fire, to draw out the dross, the impurities rising to the top to be removed.  Suffering strips us of all, except who we are at the very core.  In the heat of the hurt we become gold.  We only realize the essence of life - love, relationship, and glory to God - when everything else is taken away.


I am reminded too of our dear Savior.  Wasn't He 'good people?'  Wasn't Christ the embodiment of perfection?  He was the ultimate example of godliness and humanity existing in whole hearted unity.  Yet, His suffering was unlike that of any other.  Living and knowing that He came to die, to be made a sacrifice, to become sin for us.  Our 'suffering servant' knew everything of pain - emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual.  Rejection by the entire religious community, thrown out of his own hometown, abandoned in His time of need by His closest followers, beaten, stripped, mocked, crucified, separated from the Father.  Our Lord knew suffering and goodness.


So, just because someone is 'good people' it does not make one immune to suffering.  I believe it invites just the opposite.  God followers are to expect trials to come because we have a very real and very evil enemy who is looking 'to kill and steal and to destroy.'  The prince of this world will throw pain our way to make us question and take away our effectiveness for Christ. 


Next time suffering comes your way, 'count it all joy,' and know that you are in good company with saints and a Savior who have endured the pain before.