Restoration

Ernest Hemingway wrote, "The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills."

Some suggest that we respond to suffering by detaching ourselves from our desires, while others encourage us to overcome suffering by sheer force of will. At times, we may simply live in denial. It is very human to feel depressed, angry, or bitter about what we have endured.

Suffering is universal. I often wonder why God allows it in our lives. Candidly, I still find it a mystery. Anyone who claims to have the problem of pain completely figured out is either exaggerating or, possibly, hasn't suffered very much.

**However, we can find hope in the fact that God is not indifferent to our suffering. What's uncommon is how God responds to our suffering: with sacrificial love.**

In Isaiah 53, we see a prophecy that Jesus fulfilled:

*"He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering who knew what sickness was... Yet he himself bore our sicknesses, and he carried our pains... But he was pierced because of our rebellion, crushed because of our iniquities; punishment for our peace was on him, and we are healed by his wounds."*

It's a strange thing to consider that the perfect, holy, and righteous God would choose to become an unattractive man who suffered rejection, pain, and death for our sake. Yet, this is precisely what God did through Jesus Christ.

By dying on the cross, Jesus took upon himself the sin and brokenness of humanity, and in doing so, he absorbed the full force of evil and suffering. Jesus entered into the midst of our suffering and shared in it.

**The implications are revolutionary. God has transformed suffering from something meaningless and destructive into something redemptive and transformative.**

Even in our darkest moments of suffering, we are not alone. God is with us. Jesus took upon himself the sin of humanity, and through his death and resurrection, God offers forgiveness, restoration, and eternal life.