God Is a Loving Parent
If God has the power to stop bad things from happening, then why doesn’t he? This question is one of the toughest for Christians and non-believers alike to grapple with.
It can be a source of confusion, a roadblock to deepening our faith and strengthening our relationship with him. Why worship anything or anyone who doesn’t use their power for protection?
The best way I can relate to this is as a parent. When my youngest had her two-year check-up, it clicked for me. The nurse had to draw blood. My daughter wasn’t happy about the blood draw and was in both emotional and physical pain. While I was restraining her, as well as trying to calm and soothe her, I realized that this is what God must feel like when it comes to the pain of his children. What my child was experiencing was only pain and confusion. She didn’t understand or care to take into account that the blood draw was for a greater purpose. All she knew was that I, her loving mother, was holding her down, letting it happen to her.
As her mother, I wasn’t trying to add to her pain—I was simply trying to get her through it. I was fully present, attempting to comfort and console her. But all she could see was what was right in front of her, and what was right in front of her didn’t make sense.
Isn’t this the way we experience hardship? God sees things from a transcendent perspective, while we can only see what is in right in front of us. We see a setback or heartache as devastating and negative. So we fight back; we resist. We do everything but trust that our loving Father is there for us, longing to comfort and console us. Sometimes (not always), the pain we experience is for our benefit, and we can’t see that until farther on down the road. Sometimes, God is actually preventing something worse from happening to us. If nothing else, he will take our suffering and, if we allow him, use it to shape us into stronger, deeper, more compassionate people.
It is hard to accept that disappointments, failures, and closed doors can be God’s protection. But we have to be open to this possibility. We want God’s protection over our lives to look more like a clearly paved road with guardrails or a large, flashing warning sign. But thinking that way makes it hard to believe protection can also be a detour or a red light.
It can be hard to distinguish between God’s protection and a manmade roadblock. But once we come to trust and believe that God uses everything, big and small, good and bad, to protect us, we will be able to look at heartbreak and unexpected pivots with a little more hope and a lot less desolation.
We have a God who knows and understands pain and suffering, rejection and disappointment, betrayal and grief. He hung on a cross in order to do just that—to become one with us, to suffer in our stead:
He was despised and rejected—a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. (Isa. 53:3 NLT)
I encourage you yo seek to see God as the loving parent he is, fully present and grieving with you when you hurt. He has your best interests at heart, and you have to trust him in both the good times and the hard, in the joy as well as the pain. He doesn’t prevent our suffering, but he knows what it means to suffer, and this gives him the ability to comfort us better than any human being.
was a mental health therapist in the school system before becoming the full-time chaos coordinator for her family (aka stay-at-home mom). She and her husband have three young kids. Jess started writing in hopes that by sharing her stories and lessons learned, she can help others learn “the easy way.”
Photograph © Ben Moses, used with permission
