John 3:16-17
God's Love for the World
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
John 11:35-36
Jesus Wept
35 Jesus wept.
36 Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”
1 Peter 4:19
Suffering and Still Doing Good
19 So then, those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good.
God created the world and the universe...In the world we have, we have good and we have evil...For me, it seems that there is joy in goodness, and in suffering (I used to think) -it was evil...I had grouped all sufferings together...So, I used to think that suffering, like Job's friends thought -somehow evil was involved...Now I think, there are different types of suffering...I think now that some sufferings are connected by love...So over the years, I may have been wrong about lumping all sufferings together...I have learned more about suffering from the Bible, especially what Jesus went through for us in His last suffering days on the cross...Suffering, may not always be related to evil...There may be such a thing I will label, "love shared sufferings."...For those who suffer, and work they way through their suffering, with the faith in Jesus, continue to do good and be happy...They understand that Jesus is there in their own sufferings...
God could have left Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, in paradise -after the fall, but He chose not to...The couple had to leave their first home place and find a new place...We sin and are not perfectly moral like our Creator...But God still loved the world and mankind after we had to leave the garden...And it would take His Son to save the world to get us back to the garden...But even through His death, and our getting back to the garden, and into His Kingdom takes some suffering, grieving, some unhappiness, and even death...
So in this world, we will have suffering...And to love someone, it seems, we will have to suffer...By that, I mean, if we want to love someone, we have to put ourselves out there...With all our faults, flaws, and all the defections we have...And the ones we love need to shares these same things with us...To truly love someone, it has to be unfettered...To love someone seems you have to be vulnerable to suffering...You have to be be willing to suffer right along with the one and the ones you love...And they have to do the same...Neither party in a loving relationship can try or want to control the ones they love...All these feelings of both the good and the bad in a loving relationship are to be shared...
God gives us this total free will and free choice in His Love...For love to be real, you have to give to the one you love -their total free will...They can better be themselves with free will...When this sharing of each other and the free will happens, pain happens...You and the ones you love will go through trials and tribulations in your life together...Some of these trials will bring tears...Death happens on earth to the one's we love...Even in the Bible's shortest of verses, we are told that "Jesus wept."...Jesus was crying, because His friend Lazarus had died...The Jews even said, "See how He loved him."...Even the Divine weep, in times of grief...So by being in love and putting yourself out there to be loved, you have always the possibility of a broken heart and this pain of grief...So we have the problem of getting hurt, by the ones you love...Even when they leave us in passing on to the next world and into His Kingdom...No doubt Lazarus and Jesus now are having a good (a great) time in heaven...But the world, as we know it gives us these trials, this pain, this weeping...
It seems this is the world that God created...God wants us to be vulnerable in love...He was...He sent His Son to earth, to teach us the good news and to teach us more about Him...Some listened and some didn't...The ones who didn't listen charged Him with blasphemy and hung Him from a cross until He died... A Father watching His Son die in a long and tortuous death is to suffer...How painful for both the Father and the Son on the First Easter...On the cross love and suffering were brought together...It seems, at least to me, that love cannot exist without goodness and beauty...But also, it has those elements, those times of heartache, of pain, and of weeping...
I am not sure we can avoid suffering in love...If we try to avoid suffering, we may not be able to love...The ones we love the most give us our biggest heartaches...But the ones we love the most give us our greatest joys...