God Cries with Us
John 9:1-12
Illustration
by Ken Griffin

C.S. Lewis wrote a story about how God suffers with us. C.S. Lewis was a medical aid in WWII during the air war over London, with the bombing raids and dogfights. A little girl, perhaps four or five years old, was brought into the makeshift first-aid station badly hurt, in the arms of her father who was crying with the daughter. The doctor on duty quickly knew the problem, he knew that to save the child's life she would have to lose her leg through amputation. The doctor insisted that the man place the girl onto the table so they could saw it off before she died from her bleeding wound. Lewis told of the excruciating pain in the father's eyes as he laid his daughter onto that bloody table and pried her little hands off, one finger at a time off of his coat sleeve, about how that father with all love and tears flowing held her down to this table, this torture while she screamed in pain and agony as the doctor cut away at muscles and bones and flesh, so that she might have life.

God loves us, Christ has shown, just as a father loves his own children. Sometimes, sometimes, God grieves with us, and our screams of pain and fear and hatred pierce right into his heart. God understands when in pain we cry out ‘Why, oh why, God?' God instead calls back to trust and know that we are still loved. And that even in the pains of this world we live through it with God beside us so that we might have life eternal.

Why, Why, Why?, by Ken Griffin