whose children suffered at the hands of Herod,
though they had done no wrong:
by the suffering of your Son
and by the innocence of our lives
frustrate all evil designs
and establish your reign of justice and peace;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Philip Yancey, The Question That Never Goes Away: What is God up to in a world of such tragedy and pain? (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2013) has the following quotes:
Miroslav Volf: Those who observe suffering are tempted to reject God; those who experience it often cannot give up on God, their solace and their agony...You can protest against the evil of the world only if you believe in a good God. Otherwise the protest doesn’t make sense.(Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace ([Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005], 190-91
and having asked for many years "Where is God when it hurts?" now also asks: "Where is no-God when it hurts?"Ingmar Bergman: You were born without purpose, you live without meaning, living is its own meaning. When you die, you are extinguished. (The Magic Lantern: An Autobiography [New York: Viking Penguin, 1988], 204)
"Only a suffering God can answer whether this planet is worth the cost. I have a clue to the answer, though, after talking to families who lost a son or daughter. If you ask them - 'These six or seven years you had with your child, were they worth the pain you feel now?' - you will hear a decisive Yes. As the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote after the death of a young friend, ''Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.' Perhaps God feels the same way about fallen creation?" (109)
