Not until suffering strips away sentiment and makes you long for a God who isn’t reacting, but reigning. Not scrambling for answers, but already working redemption. Because suffering burns off the excess. It peels back the polished and leaves only what’s real. And what’s real must be true. Suffering doesn’t just refine. It reveals.

A national reporter, voice heavy with grief, asked a local pastor the question that breaks us all:

“How do you talk about a good and loving God when something like this happens?”

“This” was the flood devastating Texas—homes swallowed, families scattered, lives upended.

The pastor answered with care. His words were shaped by faith and compassion, but his voice barely filled the room.

From a bedroom nearby came another voice.
Sharper. Raw. Unflinching. Not from the television.
From my wife, Gracie.

Her body bears the wounds of a car accident that changed everything in 1983—decades of surgeries, infections, and relentless pain. Ninety-eight operations. Both legs amputated. Still recovering from her latest hospital stay, drainage tubes in place, she lay bedridden.
But her spirit stood.

With a voice steadier than her frame, she thundered out:
“He allows what He hates to achieve what He loves!”

It wasn’t comfort food for the soul. It was heat-forged steel.
She wasn’t correcting the pastor.
She wasn’t addressing the nation.
She was reminding herself what she knew to be true.

Those words weren’t hers originally. They came from Joni Eareckson Tada—a friend, a fellow traveler in suffering, a sister in affliction. That phrase surfaced as an anchor in her book with Steve Estes, When God Weeps.
Gracie didn’t memorize that line. She lived it.

But saying it didn’t fix her. The pain remained. The legs didn’t reappear.

I’ve wrestled with this for a lifetime and landed here:
If God allows suffering, He’s not indifferent. Allowing means choosing—and choosing means He’s ordained it as part of His purpose. He’s not wringing His hands. He’s writing a greater story.

That’s not blaming God for evil. It’s trusting that He’s not absent when it comes.
The doctrine of divine concurrence reminds us that even in human choices—wise or wicked—God remains sovereign. Not detached. Not surprised. Involved.

Romans 8:28 offers both clarity and constraint:
“We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.”

That qualifier matters. This isn’t a blanket promise. It’s a covenant one—for those tethered to Christ.

Scripture doesn’t flinch from this:

• Genesis 50:20: “You meant evil… but God meant it for good.”
• Acts 2:23: Jesus was “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God,”yet “you crucified and killed.”
• Isaiah 45:7: “I form light and create darkness… I make well-being and create calamity…”

These verses don’t go down easy. They’re not supposed to.
Not until suffering strips away sentiment and makes you long for a God who isn’t reacting, but reigning. Not scrambling for answers, but already working redemption.

Because suffering burns off the excess. It peels back the polished and leaves only what’s real.
And what’s real must be true. Suffering doesn’t just refine. It reveals.

I’ve watched it in my wife—prayers whispered through clenched teeth, hymns sung through morphine fog, the gospel carved deeper than pain could reach. No performance. No pretense. Just faith, refined by fire.

She wasn’t offering an answer for the flood.
She was standing on what withstands the flood.

She would never claim to be a theologian—but I’ve seen her trust God in ways no classroom could ever teach.
That kind of faith is earned, drop by drop, in suffering.

She’s learned what Peter once tasted—briefly—and would later grasp fully:
It’s not what you stand on. It’s who you look to.

When Peter fixed his eyes on Jesus, he stood—on water.
When Gracie fixes her eyes on Jesus, she stands—prosthetics or not.

Paul instructed us to comfort one another with the same comfort we ourselves have received from God (2 Corinthians 1:4).
So—what comforts us?

The Heidelberg Catechism offers an answer that has steadied believers for centuries:
“What is your only comfort in life and in death?”
That I am not my own,
but belong—body and soul,
in life and in death—
to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.

That’s not sentiment. That’s bedrock.

It’s not a comfort that removes suffering, but one that anchors us through it.
Christ is not just our comforter—He is our comfort.
And that truth holds—whether we’re standing, kneeling, or crawling through the fire.

In suffering, there is truth.
Not because pain itself is redemptive—but because Christ, the Truth, meets us there.
And He is enough.

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you… and through the fire, you shall not be burned.”
(Isaiah 43:2)

Peter Rosenberger  hosts the nationally syndicated radio program, Hope for the Caregiver. His newest book is “A Caregiver’s Companion: Scriptures, Hymns, and Forty Years of Insights for Life’s Toughest Role.” Fidels Publishing August 2025. PeterRosenberger.com @hope4caregiver