I’ve never been in a season of life with so many stories of pain and horrendous loss among my friends. In more than six decades of life experiences, I’m feeling a different level of emotion and inner conflict than ever before.

I’ve been close to so many tragedies and sad stories over the four decades of my ministry leadership, but that collection of experiences has not given me a foolproof formula for walking through even more of it in the lives of those I care about.

It feels that almost every day, another surprise medical diagnosis or accidental death impacts my circle of friends. Still, so many pleasurable experiences are mine to enjoy on a daily basis. It awakens in me a mixture of feelings and emotions that are hard to reconcile with one another.

On one hand, I’m verbalizing my prayers for the relief of pain and the healing of losses for my friends. In some cases, we pray and hope for the story to take a sudden turn for the better, and for all to be restored to how it should be. I can join in a story of hopeful faith and in asking for a miracle.

On the other hand, some stories are way past the point of hoping for a miraculous return to life as it was before. In these cases, almost nothing will be as it was for these friends. Do I have anything meaningful to say? Is there anything useful to offer? Is there something they can hang on to?

That’s what fills my heart with a new level of conflicting feelings, and a struggle to apply the points of belief that are listed in my personal theology manual.

It’s the return of the age-old questions in various forms: Why doesn’t God fix these tragic stories? Why doesn’t he demonstrate what we often proclaim that he has the power to do?

On behalf of my friends for whom life will never again be normal, I get angry at simplistic clichés of God’s goodness, of how astounding miracles are promised for those who get it right, of how life is supposed to be free from pain and grief.

I also get upset at statements that are blasphemous and vicious toward God because of personal pain and loss. I feel really sad when people feel that God doesn’t care at all. I want these friends to know God in his mercy and how, in history, he has cared for and carried people through the most incredible sufferings imaginable.

So, what will change in my personal views and beliefs regarding tragedy, pain, sickness, and losses? What are the real questions for this time in life? Are there answers that satisfy the paradoxes and contradictions of our beliefs and experiences about God and reality?

Right now, I choose one primary thing to do: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength…and your neighbour as yourself.” Read it here.

That’s the one thing that I know that I want to build on. Because I know that loving myself only is a dead-end street; because answers to hard questions continue to seem unsatisfactory; because I know the incredible peace that a loving God has given to others who have suffered incredibly more than I have; because I know that my turn is coming to experience hard things I didn’t expect and don’t ask for. And above all, I build on a faith that the power of Christ’s resurrection will redeem all things and set all things right.