Suffering Well as a Proof of God

I doubt the existence of God from time to time. These doubts sometimes last for just a moment, and other times they linger long enough for me to categorize them into one of two varieties:

1) I doubt there is a God when I’m witness to good people suffering evil.

2) I doubt God when I fail to see Jesus’ likeness inside people who claim to follow him, especially myself.

The former makes me wonder if God is able to save people from the evil that surrounds us. The latter makes me wonder if God is able to save us from the evil within us.

It’s in these moments I tend to get angry at God for His negligence, or I begin to doubt there is actually a supernatural force behind all of my doctrine and ceremony after all.

I recently received word one of my college friends, Barb, was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Barb and Dan — who is now her long-time husband — did everything together in college. We studied, prayed, ate, and explored Chicago.  After college, I returned to Erie while they left for Germany, and then moved to Alaska to serve as missionaries.

Since I first read the news Barb had terminal cancer, I’ve prayed, I’ve cried, but surprisingly I haven’t found myself doubting God’s morality or existence. I don’t think this is due to some newfound maturity, but because of the way Dan has responded to this crisis.  Dan’s been overloaded with well-wishes and prayer from two continents, so he created a Twitter account (@danbarbevans) to update Barb’s treatment and his emotional highs and lows.  Dan calls this account his real-time prayer journal. I’ve read how Dan has kept a faithful vigil at his wife’s bedside and how he’s struggling to explain to his two children how sick their mother is.  I’ve read Dan’s prayers and his emotional brokenness. There is something about the way Dan has responded to this tragedy that forbids me from questioning God.

In my scripture reading, I came across these verses about the same time I became aware of Barb’s illness:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.

2 Corinthians 1:3-7

Dan has become a kind of proof of God in my life. Dan, somehow, is allowing God to comfort him in the darkest passage of his life. Through Christ, this comfort is overflowing out of his life, and washing into mine. Through Dan, I am able to experience God who is there, who suffers with us; and I know He is there and He is good.