One Lesson About Suffering: You May Never Know Why

Suffering has a way of turning us into investigators.

When something painful enters our lives, one of our first instincts is to search for an explanation. Why did this happen? What caused it? Could I have prevented it? What is God doing? And perhaps the question beneath all the others: Why would God allow this?

I have asked those questions more times than I can count. There is something comforting about believing that if we could just understand the reason behind our suffering, somehow it would become easier to carry. We imagine that an explanation would bring peace.

But one of the hardest lessons I have learned about suffering is this:

Sometimes the explanation never comes.

The Question God Didn't Answer

The book of Job has become increasingly meaningful to me for this reason. Job loses almost everything. His children die. His wealth disappears. His health fails. The life he knew collapses around him, and understandably, Job wants to know why.

What makes the story remarkable is that we, the readers, know something Job doesn't. We are given a glimpse behind the curtain. We know there is more happening than Job can possibly see.

But Job never receives that perspective.

When God finally speaks, He doesn't give Job the explanation we might expect. He doesn't walk him through everything that happened or explain every moment of his suffering. Instead, God reminds Job of something far greater: there is more happening than Job can see, and God can be trusted with what Job cannot understand.

Standing Inside a Single Chapter

I think that is where many of us struggle. We experience life from an incredibly limited perspective. We see the diagnosis, the relationship that fell apart, the job that disappeared, or the prayer that seems unanswered. We see the hospital room, the financial struggle, the grief, the betrayal, or the future that suddenly looks nothing like the one we planned.

Naturally, we try to make sense of it.

But we are trying to understand an entire story while standing inside a single chapter.

That doesn't mean our pain isn't real, and it doesn't mean we shouldn't ask questions. Scripture is filled with people crying out to God, grieving, questioning, and asking Him why. Faith doesn't require us to pretend that suffering doesn't hurt. Sometimes faith simply means accepting that we cannot see everything God sees.

For a long time, I think I unconsciously connected strong faith with certainty. If I trusted God enough, perhaps I would understand. If I prayed enough, perhaps everything would eventually make sense. If God redeemed something painful, perhaps I would finally be able to look backward and say, That's why it happened.

Sometimes God does allow us to see what He has done through difficult circumstances. We can look backward and recognize ways He shaped us, strengthened our faith, changed our direction, or used our story to help someone else.

Other times, the questions remain.

When You Can't See the Whole Path

Maybe that is part of what makes trust so difficult. We want God to show us the whole path before we agree to take the next step, while He often asks us to follow Him without knowing exactly where the road leads.

Perhaps you are walking through something right now that you cannot explain. You have prayed about it. You have thought about it. You have replayed the decisions that brought you here, and you still don't understand.

Maybe you don't need to solve the entire story today.

Job couldn't see the whole story. Neither can we. But God can.

That doesn't remove the pain or make the road easy. It simply means we don't have to see the entire path before taking the next step.

Sometimes faith looks like trusting God with the part of the story we cannot see and taking one step forward anyway.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.”
— Proverbs 3:5