Because of Jesus, we know our future by looking at his past. And it is full of hope. We have an eternal hope that our future beyond suffering is a future without suffering. That is the one piece of information God has made sure we know.

There are over one billion websites on the internet, yet some days it can feel as though they contain none of the information we want to know. Approximately four million new book titles are released each year, yet too often they tell us everything we don’t want to know. At least 350,000 new tweets are published every minute, and for what? Even with all this information at our fingertips, we still long for more—especially in times of suffering.

It was June sixth, 2015. My wife and I quietly walked to our gray Honda Accord, parked at Ahuja Medical Center in Beachwood, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. We had just received news of our infertility, and there was not much to say. We hugged. We cried. We drove home in silence. But the deep ache in our hearts created a longing for answers, and it didn’t take long for us to wonder: What’s next for us? What will our future look like? Will we ever be Mom and Dad?

That day, there was not one website, book, or tweet that could answer our questions. In fact, it seemed we were able to find out everything we didn’t want to know and learn everything we couldn’t care less about in response to our desperate search for answers. This is the power of suffering. The most difficult parts of our lives cultivate an appetite for the least available information—the future.

There is not one website that can tell you if your husband’s cancer treatment will be successful. There is no book that can warn you if your pregnancy will end in another miscarriage. There is no podcast you can listen to or YouTube video you can watch that will reassure you your parents’ marriage will make it. Ultimately, the most pressing questions of our future remain unanswered.

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