Why the suffering?

It is a question we cannot help but ask.  At the same time, it is a question which has no good answer.

People are constantly attempting to ease our suffering with medical or geopolitical explanations.  We try religious platitudes and somehow convince ourselves that indicating that 'everyone saw this coming' is a helpful observation.  It isn't.  None of them are.  No matter what the explanation, it doesn't satisfy. Suffering is not something that can be educated away.  It is - that is all.

Often at the root of our suffering - buried deep within our heart - is the idea that if we had done it differently, if we had simply lived more righteously or eaten more greens and less sugar, or exercised daily instead of whenever....if we had just done it right we would not be suffering today.  Some of that is true.  Most of it isn't.  Because, in the end, we all die, and the way out of this world is no easier than the labor that brought us into it.

For those who follow Jesus this leads to the misconception that the perfect one doesn't suffer - doesn't have to - can avoid it - will diminish the experience to no more than the irritation of a mosquito bite.  Jesus was perfect, ergo Jesus wouldn't have to endure suffering.  He could walk around it or whisk it away.  Perhaps.  Perhaps his power as one with the Creator of the Universe made this possible while, at the same time, his deep love for the very creation he wrought constrained him to walk with us....even into suffering.

This brings us to Peter who wants glory and power for his Messiah, not suffering and death.  And although I am sure Peter speaks out of deep affection for Jesus, he also speaks out of his own thoughts and purposes, his own constructions of what it means to be a Messiah.  Peter wants a path that does not include suffering and death........but then, don't we all?  Haven't you said once or twice in your life..."There has to be an easier way!"?

..not for a God whose love takes on human flesh, who steps into the world we inhabit, in the flesh that we inhabit, with the realities we all face.  There is no easier way.  When Jesus walks with us, he walks where we walk and suffers as we suffer.  Jesus takes the risks that we take, feels the exhaustion and frustration we feel (re-read some of his encounters with both the religious leaders and his disciples), grieves as we grieve......and suffers as we suffer.

Jesus took no detours around the suffering that he faced.  He carried our suffering in his own body until the very end. It was his suffering as well. He carried it until end, but not the end of the cross.  Jesus carried suffering into the glory of an empty tomb.

If Jesus enmeshed his life with ours and yet carried it all to new life in God, what does that say about human suffering?  Where does it ultimately rest?

Who holds us in  our suffering?