Why does God let us suffer?

This was the topic in our Bible class before worship today.

This is a great question, so many people ask "why would God let such [horrible] things happen?" One example given was a real-life facebook conversation where someone praised God that no one was injured in an accident, and a fellow-facebooker (if that is a word at all) posted "where was he for the other xxxxxx traffic fatalities this year?" (I paraphrase).

Another example given from a book being read by our class leader cited a story about two churches who prayed for two different men. The first church prayed for the recovery of their deacon who had some serious illness, the other church prayed for the safe return of a soldier. The prayers were answered for the first church, but not the second. Does that mean the people in the first church were true believers and those in the second were not?

No, of course not. I'll just sum up some points regarding this topic and let you think about it.

1. The universe is God's creation, not yours or mine;
It's not about only you or me but about everyone and our relationships with God and one another.

2. God has a different perspective; he sees the "big picture;"
Whereas we cannot even fully take in everything going on around us at any given moment.

3. God answers prayers, but the answer may not be what you expect;
What is bad for you might be good for the spirituality of 10 other people - or yourself.

God is not unfair. God does not do us harm - he doesn't have to, we do a good enough job of that on our own. We are a unique creation. God has given us some of his own attributes; knowledge of good and evil, free will, emotion, etc. Because of this we are allowed to live our lives as we see fit, or as others see fit, or don't see at all. God does not allow anything, he allows everything. It's our world. He offers a future, a way into something else through his son... we just have to take him up on his offer.