Lent: Suffering

On Day 5 of Lent, I think a friend is contemplating suicide.  It's just a gut feeling, which places me in a quandry.  Do I speak?  Do I wait?  Do I hope and pray I'm mistaken?   What is my place in this distant friendship?  His life has completely unraveled in Job-like fashion, but I am just on the Facebook periphery, which is a weird, hand-wringing place to be.

It leads me to think about suffering.  I witnessed suffering this year in its most heart-wrenching intensity as Emma's cancer raged.  But she beautifully used it to testify to God's glory and provision, and thus, all that the Bible promises about the good things suffering produces were evident in her life and death.  Not unlike Jesus walking the road to Golgotha, weeping and praying, but knowing and trusting.  

Christianity teaches that, contra fatalism, suffering is overwhelming; contra Buddhism, suffering is real; contra karma, suffering is often unfair; but contra secularism, suffering is meaningful. There is a purpose to it, and if faced rightly, it can drive us like a nail deep into the love of God and into more stability and spiritual power than you can imagine.-Tim Keller

What is it like to have a Job-like life without a Job-like faith? What is it like to feel this part of a psalm...

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?  Psalm 22:1

without this...

From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly.  Psalm 22:25