“Where is God when it hurts? God is in us . . helping to transform bad into good.”

November 14, 2010

I have been recently read some excerpts from Philip Yancey’s book, Where Is God When It Hurts? – now I need to get the whole book and read it.  Some of my favorite entries include:

“The Bible consistently changes the questions we bring to the problem of pain.  It rarely, or ambiguously, answers the backward-looking question “Why?”  Instead, it raises the forward-looking question, “To what end?’  We are not put on earth merely to satisfy our desires, to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.  We are here to be changed, to be made more like God in order to prepare us for a lifetime with God.  And that process may be served by the mysterious pattern of all creation:  pleasure sometimes emerges against a background of pain, evil may be transformed into good, and suffering may produce something of value.”

“Paul makes a grand, sweeping statement in Romans, ‘And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.’  That statement is sometimes twisted and made to imply that ‘only good things will happen to those who love God.’”

“Does God introduce suffering into our lives so that these good results will come about?...We have no right to speculate…Instead, response is our assignment.  Paul and other New Testament authors insist that if we respond with trust God will, without doubt, work in us for good.”

“Where is God when it hurts?  God is in us – not in the things that hurt – helping to transform bad into good.  We can safely say that God can bring good out of evil; we cannot say that God brings about evil in hopes of producing good.”