I gain The Confidence That God Truly Understands My Pain (excerpt)

p. 236 -238 Where Is God When It Hurts? Philip Yancey

Because of Jesus, I need never cry into the abyss "Hey, you up there---do you even care?" The presence of suffering does not mean that God has forsaken me. To the contrary, by joining us on earth God gave solid historical proof that He hears our groans, and even groans with us. When we endure trials, he stands beside us, like the fourth man in the fiery furnace.

Why did Jesus have to suffer and die? The question deserves an entire book, and has prompted many books, but among the answers the Bible gives is this most mysterious answer; suffering served as a kind of "learning experience" for God. Such words may seem faintly heretical, but I am merely following the phraseology from the book of Hebrews.

Hebrews was written to a Jewish audience saturated in the Old Testament. The author strives to show that Jesus is "better"-----a key word throughout the book. How is He better than the religious systems they were used to? More powerful? More impressive? No, Hebrews emphasizes that Jesus is better because he has spanned the chasm between God and us. "Although He was a Son, he learned obedience from what he suffered" (5:8) Elsewhere the book tells us that the author of our salvation was made perfect through suffering (2:10)

These words, full of fathomless mystery, surely mean at least this: the Incarnation had meaning for God as well as us. Human history revolves not around our experience of God, but his experience of us. On one level of course God understands physical pain, for he designed the marvelous nervous system that warns against harm. But had he, a Spirit, ever felt physical pain? Not until the Incarnation, the wrinkle in time when God himself experienced what it is like to be a human being.

In some incomprehensible way, because of Jesus God hears our cries differently. The author of Hebrews marvels that whatever we are going through, God Himself has gone through. "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are---yet was without sin." (4:15)

We have a high priest who, having graduated from the school of suffering, "is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness" (5:2) Because of Jesus God understands, truly understands, our pain. Our tears become his tears. We are not abandoned.