Suffering

Suffering is such a broad word. There is the suffering that comes from prison camps and torture chambers, and there is suffering from a runny and achy nose. I read recently that when we suffer we attract advice like “money attracts thieves.” Everyone has an idea concerning what is wrong with us and a prescription for how to get out of it. The torturers always offer and alternative to the pain they inflict, but usually what they suggest will only bring on a new form of suffering. Maybe not so physically painful, but perhaps more emotionally. Even friends and family offer at first sympathy and then advice, but if we fail to come around we are usually abandoned to our misery.

There are times when no matter what the degree of suffering, what we need is not prescriptions, advice, or sympathy but Hope and Hope is always found in God.
When we truly suffer, and as humans we will all experience suffering, God’s way is not what we suffer but in the way we suffer. Whatever or whomever got us in trouble and produced the suffering cannot separate us from God. His way is redemption and hope, and redemption, not the suffering, is the ultimate.

About the author

Webb Hubbell is the former Associate Attorney General of The United States. His novels, When Men Betray, Ginger Snaps, A Game of Inches, The Eighteenth Green, and The East End are published by Beaufort Books and are available online or at your local bookstore. When Men Betray won one of the IndieFab awards for best novel in 2014. Ginger Snaps and The Eighteenth Green won the IPPY Awards Gold Medal for best suspense/thriller. His latest, “Light of Day” will be on the bookstands soon.

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