Last year, when we’d first found out my dad’s diagnosis, my youth leader passed me Philip Yancey’s ”Where is God When It Hurts?” book. I chucked it aside and didn’t think of reading it. Who had time to read amidst everything that was going on at the time?

When my dad was first admitted into ICU, I sat at home, praying and thinking of Papa and the pain he was going through. My mind wandered to one phrase, “Where is God when it hurts?”

Then, I remembered the book. So I went in search of it and started reading about pain and God. How could God let His people experience pain? Where was the justification in that? Why did we have to suffer so much? Philip Yancey’s “Where is God When It Hurts?” presented an argument that if I remember correctly were along the lines of, “Pain is good.” I know, “say what?”

You’d have to read the book to gain a better understanding of what Yancey was trying to convey. He gave examples of people who could not feel physical pain and how destructive that was. We should be blessed we can feel pain because pain tells us what is wrong in our body, it alerts us. Pain, suffering and loss are also not punishments from God. Also we should hold on to the power of hope and that we are not alone on this frightful journey. That God knows what we are going through here, the pain, suffering and loss that we experience on earth because He went through it too.

Speaking of which, I attended church on Easter Sunday and it was one of the most powerful messages to date. Isn’t it funny that we forget what the essential message is most of the time? That we forget so easily and constantly what Christ did for us? Maybe it had to do with the pastor telling the story or the graphic pictures displayed on the screens but the message of the cross is that powerful, that moving and that painful to hear and to watch. Jesus Christ did suffer so much for us. The middle-aged man sitting next to me kept wiping his tears with his handkerchief, the woman in front of me, tissue in hand, was sniffling away and I too unexpectedly started to tear and wanted to sob.

Links to some articles that I came across today that made me write this post:-

- Where’s God When It Hurts? In the midst of pain, it’s hard to see the good.

- Where is God When It Hurts

- A Book I can Highly Recommend. Where is God When It Hurts?

- Where Is God When It Hurts?

I did like the book.