I don’t know the whys in all our sufferings.
Some say, “God never gives us more than we can handle”— as if God is at the whim of our human strength. And yet, He is not a God whose plans serve each of our individual strength in such a way as to measure it, or even make it stronger for the strength’s sake. God is not taking our loved ones, or sending trials our ways to prove our strength to us or to the world. He doesn’t work with the human barometer at the center of His omniscience, as if to weigh His eternal plans according to how much ephemeral humans can (or cannot) carry.
No.
Our God is not more concerned with our image than with His character. And this is good news in our trials.
Others, on the other hand, believe that God gives us so much more suffering as to show us we cannot handle any of it on our own. As if God is so bent to showcase human weakness as to harshly prove his strength. God doesn’t really need to beat us down with pain to prove to us our own weakness. He is not so self-preoccupied that He will load us up with trials as if to win a match of burden-weight-lifting in the arena of daily living.
Perhaps the answer is somewhere between the two perspectives.
God gives. We carry.
God is powerful. We are weak.
We hurt. God heals.
We fall. God raises us up.
We suffer. God comforts us.
It’s not how much He gives or takes away, but how He loves us in the midst of giving and taking away of anything. It’s not how much we can carry (or not able to carry), but how present He is in the every pound of our pain and suffering.
He doesn’t measure our strength—He exerts His power. Christians themselves are not the beginning and the end of any of trials—but God’s children, bookcased in by God’s Holy Spirit and His Word.
I don’t know the why in our trials. But I know the Who in our sufferings. And based on the Bible, God loves us so much in Christ that He will be with us through it all—much suffering, or weak faith alike.
ancamartin 