The Lord takes pity on us
God doesn’t allow us to suffer for the sake of suffering. How could He? How could this be possible, when He is the God of Love? He allows hardships to occur for our own good and for our own benefit. Whoever can see this is a saint already and they already dwell in paradise. Here lies the secret. If we see things from God’s viewpoint, they will look different. A man who is humble, a man who trusts God, doesn’t find it hard to say: “No matter how things stand, God is merciful, full of tender kindness and love toward all people. He doesn’t want to see people in pain, suffering, misery or torment. When such a situation occurs, then something else is the matter.” In people’s lives, the difficult circumstances they experience are the direct consequence of their being far from God. In His mercy and love, God allows people to experience hardship and pain, so that they can awaken, so that they may arise and return to God. The one, who understands in their
heart that God loves, that He takes pity on man and that He doesn’t want his creation to undergo hardship, they will say: “I need to undergo all this suffering and whatever else happens to me. I need this pain. No matter how great or how deep or how intense my hardship is, it will benefit me.”Let’s not think it is strange then, if we realize that the pain and misery we feel and experience, is a blessing, it’s God’s love toward us, it’s His very own mercy and kindness, which we feel and experience instead. When you start to believe in the goodness of God in your heart, you will feel and confess: “When pain and hardship exist, my heart is all the more cleansed and sanctified.
The benefit and blessing would have been much smaller, had God relieved me of the pain and hardship.” It’s no big deal for God to relieve you of whatever you are suffering from. It’s just not to your benefit. If, indeed, you love the truth, if you love God and you want to find yourself on the way to salvation, you will realize that what you are going through leads towards the softening and refinement of your soul. What you are going through lead towards your repenting, becoming more humble, developing real trust and love towards God. There comes a time when you truly realize and experience that God could have taken all the pain and hardship away from you, if it had been your benefit. Instead, it was absolutely essential and beneficial for this pain to remain. This is why God let it remain.
Through faith we can understand that the Lord takes pity on us and says to us: “Hang in there and be brave. The time comes when whatever torments you, will be history”. And if the time has come to hear: “Enough already. You are saved”, so be it. And if this doesn’t happen, it means that this is not the proper time; it means, that it is not for our benefit for this to occur. Consider a fine point here: The Lord takes pity on us and offers us what he wants and can offer being God. But, he takes special pity on us when we think it’s not our fault that we are suffering –and it may actually look like it– and when we wonder: “Are we to blame? What have we done? Why has this or that tribulation befallen us?” Especially in these cases the Lord has special mercy on us and addresses us with these words: “Don’t cry. This is all for your own good”, and as if by some miracle, God rises us from the dead.