So Where's the Love in Pain?

Installment #2 ~ In the Beginning

I once worked with a lady who's mother was dying an agonizingly slow and pain filled death by cancer. She would come to work with tears in her eyes over the suffering her mother was going through. Shadows behind her eyes and dark circles under them from the horrors she watched in her long bedside vigil.

One day, I attempted to step in beside her, so to speak, to let her know that someone was there praying for her and her mother. She said to me, "I don't think I believe in God anymore. How could a loving God allow my mother to suffer this way? My mother was a good person, she doesn't deserve this. If God truly cared, He would take this away from her."

Whew! Powerful words that hit me hard. And at that time, I had no answer for her...at least none that would have helped. Sometimes a person just needs to get the poison out of their mouth and they don't need theology. So I remained silent except to state that I would continue to pray for her and her mother, and that I cared.

But seeing this pain and suffering play out so close to me yet again, caused me to go to God seeking His answer, "Lord, why do You allow pain and suffering in good people? Do You really care about us?" It took several years for me to grow enough in Him to find the answer, but I have it now, and if you're interested, read on.

God; He had just created the most beautiful of all settings, a perfect garden for the ultimate of His creation; Man, the object of His eternal, omniscient Love...Adam and Eve, the shining glory of the Creator God, set into His perfect garden. Perfect love.

But wait. Something is missing. God Almighty has shown His perfect love to man; in fact, He's poured it out on His beloved without restraint. But what about their love for God...will it be returned? There is only one way to know, and that is to offer them a choice, to love...or not... through simple obedience. (1 John 5:2 & 3)

Love without options, with no choice except to love, is not love at all...it's a form of slavery. It's also delusional. But God loved us so much that He would accept nothing less than our love in return through our choice! So knowing the consequenses, still He offered the option.

He gave us the tree...
And He gave us the choice.
A perfect garden.
A tree to manifest our choice.
He took the ultimate risk.
Can you imagine the agony of knowing the outcome, but still offering it anyway?
The hope...the hope...how He must have hoped!
Will they love Me enough to trust me and simply obey?
The broken heart!
The agony of His rejected, broken heart.

And the agony of the consequences of our choice.
Pain
Death
Disease
Murder
Anger
Hatred
Selfishness
Pride

The list is huge...and it was us who opened the door and allowed it in to God's perfect setting. The horrors are caused by our sin, not by God's apathy. The horrors are the consequences of our choice...our choice to withhold our love from Him.

Were it not for God's ultimate love...the risk He took of loosing our love by giving us the choice to love Him back, or not, we would still be living in Paradise, with no suffering, pain or death, but also with no knowledge of good and evil, with no knowledge of real Love, with no choice to return His love in full measure...from our hearts.

So we must deal with the pain, and the death, and hate, and war, and sickness and all the other evil things that we loosed upon ourselves in our moment of rebellion, but we also get the choice to truly love Him back. Isn't that worth the price? He thinks it is!

Love returned.
That's the prize He waits for,
Hopes for,
Endures all things for.
Perfect love from God,
Returned to Him.
Love never fails.