“All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that
was made” (John 1:3).
All things” were made by Him, Jesus, and yet—according to Scripture—
“Jesus wept” (John 11:35). The Creator wept? Even more so, Jesus was
“despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with
grief ” (Isa. 53:3). The Creator, a man of sorrows, despised and rejected? And He once
cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46).
How could these things be? It’s because Jesus, our Creator, also was our Redeemer,
and as such, He was the Crucified God—the Creator who took on humanity and
in that humanity suffered through a life of privation and toil that ended with Him
hung on a Roman cross.
Thus, our Creator, the One in whom “we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts
17:28), suffered in humanity in ways that none of us ever could. We can experience
only our own griefs, our own sorrows; at the cross He bore “our griefs, and carried
our sorrows” (Isa. 53:4)—all of them. It’s the most amazing act in all cosmic history.
With that background (that of the crucified God lifted up before us), we will for
the next few months seek to better comprehend the incomprehensible—our own
suffering, the sufferings of Christians, of those who have committed their lives to
Christ. We make no claims to have all the answers or even many; we’re claiming
only that “God is love” (1 John 4:8) and that although these things happen, we can
trust God despite them and, indeed, grow in grace through them, no matter how
painful the process.
This quarter we will study the Word of God and see how other flesh and blood,
though radiated in faith, nevertheless faced despair, betrayal, disappointment, loss,
injustice, and abuse (sound like anything you can
relate to?). How did they cope? What did they learn?
What can their examples teach us?
As we look at these people, their experiences,
their struggles, and their trials of faith (which might be much like our own), we must always see them
contrasted against the background of the Cross. We must always remember that no matter what anyone
faces, Jesus Christ, our Creator and Redeemer, went
