THE lead up to Easter has been one of suffering for many people. The winds have roared, the waters rose and the floods have come. Cyclone Debbie has done its damage to north Queensland and the flow-on effects on Lismore and Rockhampton particularly have been described as “looking like war zones”.

The most tragic personal story was that of Stephanie King and her children, on their way to help with the flood relief, getting swept into the darkness of the Tweed River. Closer to home we have also seen the violent attacks in Queanbeyan, resulting in the tragic death of student Zeeshan Akbar.

It begs the question – “Where is God in this suffering? Why didn’t He stop it”.

There appears to be only two possible answers. Either God doesn’t care about human suffering, or He simply isn’t there. If it is the former, then why should we care about God. If He wants to sit as a passive watchmaker over the universe with grand indifference to evil and suffering then He is certainly not worthy of worship. If it is the latter, then there is no real reason or purpose behind anything and we must simply make the best of a cold and ultimately meaningless universe.

But what if there was another possibility? What if we have missed something?

Imagine a bear with her foot stuck in a rabbit trap left by poachers. She is in immense pain and is wailing. A ranger comes along and sees the bear’s pain, and realises the only way to restore the situation is to shoot her with a tranquiliser and release her once she is asleep. It is a compassionate and merciful act. The bear has a different perspective though. Not only has she realised that the rabbit trap is some kind of human contraption set to hurt her, but then she gets shot. If she was in any way still conscious when the ranger started to remove the painful trap, she would be in absolutely no doubt that the human’s intent was to hurt and ultimately kill her.

The difference in this story is one of knowledge. The bear’s mind cannot grasp the real motivation and plan of the ranger. She can only make false assumptions based on her limited experience. There is a large gap between the rational capacity of the bear and the ranger.

Is it therefore possible that it is not that God doesn’t care or is absent, but rather that we just can’t comprehend the big picture? The difference between our mind and God’s is infinitely wider than that of the bear and ranger. Could it be that God actually cares tremendously about suffering even in circumstances like the recent floods where it just doesn’t seem to make sense?

The Easter story illustrates part of this answer. Christians believe that Jesus was the incarnation of God and that His response to suffering was to suffer and die Himself. Suffering is not abstract but deeply personal, and therefore perhaps it required a personal response.

Jesus shows us that God is not absent, nor does He not care. When we are broken, we see that He was also broken. When we are pierced as Zeeshan was, we see the pained face of one who was also pierced. When we are scared and gasping for air like Stephanie, we can look to a Saviour, also gasping, but with the promise on his lips of a place with no more tears.

Geoffrey Studdert-Kennedy, a chaplain in World War I who saw the most horrific sights a person can see, put it this way in his poem “High and Lifted Up”:

God, the God I love and worship, reigns in sorrow on the Tree,

Broken, bleeding, but unconquered, very God of God to me.

All that showy pomp of splendour, all that sheen of angel wings,

Was but borrowed from the baubles that surround our earthly kings.

In a manger, in a cottage, in an honest workman’s shed,

In the homes of humble peasants, and the simple lives they led,

In the life of one an outcast and a vagabond on earth,

In the common things He valued, and proclaimed of priceless worth,

And above all in the horror of the cruel death He died,

Thou hast bid us seek Thy glory, in a criminal crucified.

And we find it – for Thy glory is the glory of love’s loss,

And Thou hast no other splendour but the splendour of the Cross.

We may have to go through the darkness of Good Friday in our lives and in our country in countless ways, but we must make sure we don’t forget that Sunday is coming. Death is overcome, hope is restored, and the story of suffering is reframed as a story of the greatest love imaginable. Happy Easter.

Nick Jensen is the director of the Lachlan Macquarie Institute, which helps develop leaders in public policy (lmi.org.au).