“My God, my God why hast thou forsaken me?”

Perhaps the single most poignant question in all of scripture if not all that has been written.

Why? Why do I have to exist in this place of pain where it seems you are not? Why must I go through this senseless thing? Where are you in the valley?

“I am that which will bring meaning to your pain…because it is in and through your pain that the people around you will be saved from theirs.”

This is my imagined answer which may be unsatisfying to us but it offers something. The more we exist for people outside of ourselves the more satisfying this answer becomes until one day our prayer is no longer “God remove from me this suffering” but rather…“if this be your will let me embrace it that it might bring healing to my brothers and sisters”.