Sufferers commonly ask, “Why me? Why not someone else? Why haven’t my friends lost a child or their husband? Why can they walk and ride bikes while I’m in a wheelchair? Why have you treated me differently, God?”  

The resurrected Jesus told Peter that one day he’d be taken “where you do not want to go” (John 21:18). Verse 19 reads, “Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then He said to him, ‘Follow me!’”

On hearing this, Peter immediately looked at John and asked, “Lord, what about him?” Instinctively he wanted to compare God’s difficult calling on his life with His plans for John. Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me” (John 21:21–22).

Now, Jesus did not want John to remain alive until His return. He wanted Peter to get His point: John’s time and manner of death are none of your business. He was saying, “Regardless of when and how my other disciples will suffer and die, you are to trust and follow me in my plan for you, including your death.”

Comparison is poison. We shouldn’t resent but rejoice for those who don’t have our diseases or losses. We should thank God He knows exactly what suffering and death He’s called each of us to endure. Early tradition says that when Peter was about to be crucified, he asked to be turned upside down, judging himself unworthy to die upright like his Lord.

As a young Christian, I loved the writings of Joseph Bayly. Joe and his wife lost three of their children—one at eighteen days, after surgery; another at five years, from leukemia; and a third at eighteen years, in a sledding accident complicated by hemophilia. Joe spoke honestly and from his heart. He grieved for his children and stood strong for his Lord.

In 1969, the year I came to Christ, Joe wrote a little book called Psalms of My Life. It contained a poem that a few years later I typed and placed on the wall by my desk in our first apartment. Fifty years later, it still touches me. It’s called “A Psalm While Packing Books.”

This cardboard box
Lord
see it says
Bursting limit
100 lbs. per square inch.
The box maker knew
how much strain
the box would take
what weight
would crush it.
You are wiser
than the box maker
maker of my spirit
my mind
my body.
Does the box know
when pressure increases close to
the limit?
No
It knows nothing.
But I know
when my breaking point
Is near.
And so I pray
Maker of my soul
Determiner of the pressure
within
upon
me
Stop it
lest I be broken
Or else
change the pressure rating
of this fragile container
of your grace
so that I may bear more.

As Joe reminds us, God knows how much we can bear; He knows how to relieve suffering and how to strengthen us to endure it.

Photo: Pexels