This study will not answer the question of suffering. The blog makes that case. This is for the person already inside the pain, who does not need another argument so much as a way to keep walking with God through it.
Go slow. You do not have to arrive composed. The people who wrote the Psalms did not.
Part 1: Say the true thing
Read Psalm 13 out loud, slowly. Count how many times David asks How long before he gets anywhere near trust. Four. God put that prayer in the Bible on purpose. Lament is not the opposite of faith. It is faith refusing to pretend.
- Write your own how long, one honest sentence. Not the polite version you would say in church. The real one.
- Now read the last two verses of the psalm. David does not explain his way out. He turns his face back toward a God he has not stopped trusting. You are allowed to hold both at once, the ache and the trust, in the same breath.
Dr. Robert Smith Jr. says a hard thing that belongs right here: you do not know what you believe until it is time to believe it. A season like this is not the failure of your faith. It is the test where your faith finds out what it is actually made of.
Part 2: Sit in good company
You are not the first to stand here, and the people who stood here best did not get tidy answers.
- Job never received the why. He received God himself, and somehow that was enough to live on. Read Job 38:1-4, where God answers not with an explanation but with his own presence.
- Jesus, in Gethsemane, asked for the cup to pass. Read Matthew 26:39. The sinless Son of God prayed to be spared suffering. Your prayer to be spared is not weak faith. It is his prayer too.
Sit with this Scripture, not to solve the pain but to be near God inside it.
- Psalm 13. Permission to ask how long, out loud, to God's face.
- Genesis 50:20. What others meant for harm, God can bend toward good. Read it as Joseph's testimony after years of injustice, not as a bandage to wave over a fresh wound.
- John 16:33. In this world you will have trouble. Jesus does not promise an easy world. He promises to be greater than it. What changes for you if both halves of that verse are true at once?
Part 3: A practice for this week, the examen of presence
Each night this week, before sleep, name two things on paper.
- One place you felt the pain today. Be specific. Do not minimize it or spiritualize it away.
- One place, however small, God was near. A text from a friend. A meal. A few minutes you could breathe.
Do not force the second one. Some nights you will only find the first, and that is honest too. But across a week, watch what your attention starts to notice. Pain has a way of shrinking the world down to itself, until the only thing you can see is the wound. This practice gently widens the frame back out, not by denying the pain but by refusing to let it be the only true thing in the day.
Dr. Robert Smith Jr. puts the goal of this season in a single line: if I know who, I do not have to know why. This practice is how you learn the Who again, one ordinary mercy at a time, even before the why ever comes. You are not collecting evidence to win an argument with your grief. You are relearning the face of a God who has not actually left, even when the pain made it feel like he had.
Part 4: It is allowed to be angry
Somewhere along the way many of us learned that a good Christian does not get angry at God. That is not in the Bible. The Bible is full of people who told God exactly how it felt, and God kept them in the canon as examples of faith, not failures of it.
Read Psalm 88, the one psalm that does not end in a turn toward hope. It closes in the dark, and God let it stand. Then read Habakkuk 1:2-4, where the prophet accuses God of not listening while violence goes unanswered. These are prayers. Loud, raw, unresolved prayers.
- Write the thing you have been afraid to say to God. The accusation, the disappointment, the question that feels too sharp to pray. Then pray it. He has heard worse and kept loving the person who said it.
- Notice the difference between turning on God and turning to God. Lament is anger aimed in the right direction. It walks toward him with the complaint instead of away from him with it. Which direction has your pain been pointing you lately?
Part 5: When the arguments are not what is needed
If you are walking with someone else in their suffering, this part is for you. Lisa Fields, who has sat with a lot of people in crisis, names the mistake most of us make.
When you are in a crisis moment, this is way more emotional than it is logical. (Lisa Fields)
The instinct is to fix the question. Resist it. The most Christlike thing you can offer a suffering person is not an explanation. It is your presence. Fields says it plainly.
When they are at an emotional place, just be there. (Lisa Fields)
- Do show up, stay, and let silence be okay.
- Do say, I do not know why, and I am not leaving.
- Do not rush them to a verse, a lesson, or a silver lining. A true answer delivered too soon lands as dismissal.
- Do not make their pain a teaching moment. Make it a place you sat with them.
Discussion questions
- When have you wrestled with why God allows suffering? What was happening in your life when the question got loud?
- Wood says love requires freedom. Where does that help you, and where does it still ache even after you understand it?
- Robert Smith Jr. says tragedy is redeemed by transformation, not explanation. Have you seen that be true, in yourself or someone else? What did the transformation cost?
- Read John 16:33 together. What does it mean to have peace in a world that still has trouble in it?
- Who in your life is suffering right now? What would it look like this week to be present without rushing to fix the question?
Leader notes
Watch the room. If someone in your group is in fresh grief, this study is not the night to debate the free will defense over their open wound. Let them set the pace. Your job is not to land every point. It is to make the group a safe place to say the true thing out loud.
If anyone discloses that they are thinking about ending their life, take it seriously and stay with them. In the United States, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available any time by call or text at 988. Presence first, then help. Do not leave them to carry it alone.
A blessing to close
May you be honest enough to lament and held enough to stay.
May you find that the God who never explained himself to Job has not left your side either.
And when you cannot find the answer, may you find him.