God Is With Us in Our Suffering

God Is With Us in Our Suffering Written by Ashley Ashcraft Half of a family gone in an instant, in a car accident. When I heard the news of our family friends, I could hardly stomach it. Why had this happened? How do I process grief like this? Paul writes in Romans 8:18 ESV from his jail cell: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” That was all I had to hang on to—the hope that as tragic as this was, there was something more and better and greater coming. Wherever our heartache and pain originate, they point us to something greater than ourselves. Our suffering is a marker to our hearts that “something is not as it should be.” We were made to live eternally. We were made to live fully and freely. And so as we live in the midst of a world where things are broken, cut short, or stuck in bondage, we learn to recognize that God doesn’t waste anything, and that he is with us in our pain and suffering. This is what Paul speaks of from his jail cell in Romans 8. Something greater is coming. Let’s allow our suffering to orient our hearts towards hoping for that.