God wants to be with you, in the midst of the pain, to show you hope.Living in a fallen world, we experience suffering on a daily basis. It is not always easy to bear such suffering, especially when it pushes us to our limits.
The good news is that we are not alone. Both Jesus and Mary suffered intensely during their lives on earth, but were able to have a supernatural hope that helped them persevere. Many of the Psalms illustrate how this might look. A Christian is not instructed to repress their feelings of suffering or abandonment, but to be vocal about them to God and to relate to him everything you are feeling. The more you let him into your suffering, the more hope he can deliver.
Here is Psalm 42, which can help give comfort in times of great suffering. It is an honest Psalm, relating the pain a person is feeling, but at the same time, placing everything into God’s hands.
As the deer longs for streams of water,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, the living God.
When can I enter and see the face of God?
My tears have been my bread day and night,
as they ask me every day, “Where is your God?”
Those times I recall
as I pour out my soul,
When I would cross over to the shrine of the Mighty One,
to the house of God,
Amid loud cries of thanksgiving,
with the multitude keeping festival.
Why are you downcast, my soul;
why do you groan within me?
Wait for God, for I shall again praise him,
my savior and my God.My soul is downcast within me;
therefore I remember you
From the land of the Jordan and Hermon,
from Mount Mizar,
Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your torrents,
and all your waves and breakers
sweep over me.
By day may the Lord send his mercy,
and by night may his righteousness be with me!
I will pray to the God of my life,
I will say to God, my rock:
“Why do you forget me?
Why must I go about mourning
with the enemy oppressing me?”
It shatters my bones, when my adversaries reproach me,
when they say to me every day: “Where is your God?”
Why are you downcast, my soul,
why do you groan within me?
Wait for God, for I shall again praise him,
my savior and my God.
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