Man of sorrows

I have tried to make sense of suffering in ways that quiet the questions and silence the ache.

People say, “Well, that’s just life.”

As if pain is some neutral force, a cold wind that simply blows where it wants, untouched by meaning, untouched by mercy.

But that answer has always felt hollow…

Because when you open the pages of Scripture, you don’t find a God who shrugs at anguish.

You don’t find a tidy explanation to soothe the mind while the heart bleeds.

You find cries, laments, torn garments, trembling voices, and prayers prayed through clenched teeth. You find prophets who groaned, kings who wept, disciples who watched their whole world fall apart.

You find suffering, named, acknowledged, grieved. You find a God who takes pain seriously enough to write it into the story, not to glorify it, but to redeem it.

Pain was not part of Eden.

Death was not woven into the original design.

Evil is an intruder, not a native.

Something in my soul knows and whispers it whenever loss knocks the breath from my lungs:

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

But the most staggering part of the story is not that God saw suffering; it’s that He stepped into it. He didn’t watch from a safe distance.

He didn’t pity us from the heavens.

He didn’t offer advice while remaining untouched by humanity’s grief.

He entered it.

He wrapped Himself in flesh that could bruise.

In nerves that could throb.

In a heart that could be pierced.

He walked roads lined with sorrow.

He chose tears.

He chose hunger.

He chose betrayal.

He chose nails.

So when I look at the crucifixion, at Jesus, God in the flesh, bleeding under a sky that refused to shine, there is one thing I cannot say:

I cannot say God is indifferent to suffering.

No.

Love nailed Him to wood so He could step into our agony with us.

Love kept Him there until every drop of mercy was poured out.

Love refused to abandon a broken world, even when that world abandoned Him.

What a reminder that I am not alone in this valley. A reminder that the God who formed galaxies has also felt the sting of a human tear.

A reminder that He does not despise my questions, nor is He intimidated by my sorrow.

He is the God who mourns with those who mourn.

The God who sits with the brokenhearted.

The God who still whispers, “I know. I’ve felt it too.”

And somehow…

somehow that changes everything.

Because if God Himself stepped into the darkness, then the darkness is not god.

If the Man of Sorrows suffered with me, then sorrow cannot be the end of my story.

If the cross is real, then hope is, too.

I don’t have all the answers.

But I have this:

A Savior who did not stay distant.

A God who came close enough to bleed.

A Love willing to experience every ounce of human suffering just to show me that I have never—never—walked through mine alone.