John 16:33
Troubles in this World
33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
John 3:16-17
God Sent His Son to Save Us
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 14:27
Jesus Gives Us Peace
27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
The cross shows me much suffering...I have learned a lot about God and suffering from the cross...The cross shows me a world where there is pain...Pain is hard to escape in this world...I myself have general anxiety disorder and have suffered from anxieties in different ways...It has been over forty three years of reacting to various triggers that cause disruptions and avoidance's and aversions in my daily life...I meditate to help me look at my negative thoughts and to learn from them...As I meditate, I personally do not see that meditation is a dogma or a belief system...What I see are my thoughts...I see no person looking at my thoughts...Where I look for a dogma or my faith, is when I look to the cross, and through the suffering...I believe that Jesus does hold this peace that is different from the peace of this world...I see a Person of Truth in Christianity...I see One who knows troubles, pain, and suffering...And in His suffering I see compassion and I somehow see a strength...
The cross shows me a world that does suffer...The cross shows me that the world does need a Savior...I believe in the cross and believe in God and His Son, because the cross shows me that God was not immune to this world of suffering and pain and its troubles...God suffered, when He lost His Only Son suffering and dying on the cross...I believe in the cross and I believe in God, because He is the Living God that has suffered in the world that He created...He is very much apart of this troubled world...And He sent His Son to not to condemn the world and the way we live, but to save it and to be our Savior...Jesus suffered for me and each of us on the cross, to save us...
John Stott sums up suffering in his book the Cross of Christ...Stott says,“I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross...The only God I believe in is the One Nietzsche ridiculed as 'God on the cross.'...In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?...I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world...But each time after a while I have had to turn away...And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in Godforsaken darkness...That is the God for me!...He laid aside his immunity to pain...He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death...He suffered for us...Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of His...There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross that symbolizes divine suffering...'The cross of Christ...is God’s only self-justification in such a world” as ours....'... 'The other gods were strong; but thou wast weak; they rode, but thou didst stumble to a throne; But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak, And not a god has wounds, but thou alone.”...
The cross speaks of suffering, of sacrifice, of LOVE, and the world's troubles...It is a worldview that as one reads the paper and the news, one can believe in and see His Truth...