Suffering visits every life. Sometimes it arrives suddenly, like a phone call in the night. Sometimes it lingers for months, like a shadow in the room. Christians feel the same ache as everyone else, yet we also carry a stubborn hope that pain does not have the last word. Few modern writers have helped the Church think and feel its way through suffering like Philip Yancey. In Where Is God When It Hurts, and in his work with Dr. Paul Brand in The Gift of Pain (also published as Pain: The Gift Nobody Wants), Yancey approaches pain with a journalist’s curiosity, a pastor’s gentleness, and a believer’s confidence in Christ.
This article walks through Yancey’s major insights on suffering from a Christian lens, then anchors them in Scripture. Along the way we will keep the tone human and honest, the way Yancey does, because neat answers often wilt in hospital rooms and grief circles. The goal is not to tie a bow on mystery, but to point to the God who meets us in it.
1) Pain tells the truth, even when it hurts
A cornerstone of Yancey’s approach is simple and startling. Physical pain, however miserable, is not the enemy. It is a messenger. Learning from Dr. Paul Brand’s work with patients who have leprosy, Yancey explains that the real danger is not feeling pain at all. In leprosy, nerves are damaged, so a patient can place a hand on a hot stove and not know it. That lack of warning, not the disease itself, leads to injuries, infections, and disfigurement. Pain, then, can be a gift, a built in warning system that says, Stop, something is wrong.
Translating that insight into the spiritual life, Yancey invites us to treat pain as information. It may reveal a broken relationship, an unhealthy pace, a body that needs care, a soul that needs God. The Bible agrees that pain can be a messenger. “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now have I kept thy word” (Psalm 119:67). Affliction is never easy, yet it can awaken us to reality, and to God.
Key takeaway: Do not ignore pain and do not idolize it. Ask what it is saying, then carry that question into prayer, community, and wise care.
2) We live in a broken, yet loved, world
Yancey refuses to pretend that suffering always makes sense on our timetable. He points to a world that is both beautiful and broken, where the same natural laws that let us build bridges can also produce earthquakes, and where the same freedom that makes love possible can also permit cruelty. Scripture frames this tension clearly. “The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now” (Romans 8:22). The world is not as it should be, yet it is not abandoned.
This is important, because it steers us between two errors. On one side is fatalism, the shrug that says, Everything is random, nothing matters. On the other side is presumption, the fiction that we can map every pain to a precise divine intention, as if God were micromanaging calamity to teach us lessons. Yancey counsels humility. We do not always know why, but we do know who. God’s character is our anchor, not our ability to decode every event.
Key takeaway: Move from Why did this happen, to Where is God in this, and What does faithfulness look like now.
3) God is not distant from suffering, God is present in it
At the center of Yancey’s reflections stands the cross. Christians do not worship a remote deity who observes pain from a safe distance. We worship the God who took on flesh, felt hunger, wept at a graveside, and suffered injustice. Jesus wept, Scripture says with disarming simplicity, at the tomb of Lazarus. “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). He also cried out from his own cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me” (Matthew 27:46). The Son entered our darkest rooms and left the door open behind him.
Because of that, Yancey urges us to trade the image of a finger pointing from heaven for the image of hands with scars. The writer of Hebrews says we have a High Priest who can be “touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (Hebrews 4:15). God’s answer to suffering is not a theory, it is a Person. “The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart” (Psalm 34:18).
Key takeaway: The question is not only, Where is God when it hurts. In Christ the answer is, Right here.
4) The Bible makes room for honest lament
Yancey gives believers permission to speak to God the way the Bible does, with reverence and with raw honesty. He notes how many psalms are laments, not cheery choruses. “How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord, for ever” the psalmist asks, “how long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily” (Psalm 13:1, 2). Job refused to curse God, yet he did not muzzle his grief. “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him” (Job 13:15). That sentence contains both pain and faith in one breath.
Lament is not unbelief. It is wounded belief that still talks to God. Yancey observes that faith does not mean you never ask questions. Faith means you bring your questions to the One who loves you. Over time lament becomes trust, not because we have mastered the mystery, but because we have met the Master in it.
Key takeaway: Tell God the truth about your pain. He can bear your weight. He would rather hear an honest cry than a fake praise.
5) Do not rush to fix, learn to stay and to serve
If you have suffered, you already know how easily well meaning friends can make things worse. Yancey asks us to retire the quick clichés, like God needed another angel, or Everything happens for a reason, especially in the early days of loss. In Where Is God When It Hurts he commends presence over pat answers. The call is to be with, to listen, to bring meals, to pray short prayers, and to keep showing up. “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2).
This is the ministry of the Church as the Body of Christ. When a member suffers, the rest of the body responds. Paul calls God “the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort, who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble” (2 Corinthians 1:3, 4). Comfort received becomes comfort given. Often the most healing sentence we can say is not an explanation, but I am here, and I will not leave.
Key takeaway: In the face of pain, presence is powerful. Fewer speeches, more chairs pulled close.
6) Suffering can form character, though we never call evil good
Yancey is careful here. We should never label evil as good. Injustice is wrong. Disease is an enemy. Death is called the last enemy in Scripture. Yet God is a master at bringing meaning out of mess and growth out of grief. Christians through the centuries have testified that hardship can deepen compassion, polish hope, and pry our fingers from idols. The apostle Paul puts it this way. “We glory in tribulations also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience, experience, and experience, hope” (Romans 5:3, 4). James agrees. “Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations, knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience” (James 1:2, 3).
Yancey echoes that pattern with stories, not formulas. He tells of people whose suffering enlarged their lives, turning them outward to serve, to create, to bless. Patient endurance is not passive. It is the daily choice to trust Christ and love neighbor in the middle of unsolved problems.
Key takeaway: Do not force a lesson on someone else’s pain, yet do expect God to grow fruit in your own.
7) Hope looks forward, and it looks around
Yancey reminds us that Christian hope is anchored in a future God has promised and in a present God inhabits. The future hope is bold. “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying” (Revelation 21:4). That is not a metaphor, it is a promise. The present hope is tender. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me” (Psalm 23:4). The presence of the Shepherd does not erase the valley, it changes how we walk it.
Holding both hopes together, Yancey encourages practices that keep pain from shrinking our world. Gratitude for small gifts, honest prayer, Scripture in the morning, a weekly meal with friends, counseling when needed, service that lifts our eyes from ourselves. Hope is a habit as well as a feeling.
Key takeaway: Fix your eyes on the horizon God has promised, and take the next kind step today.
A gentle framework for companions in pain
If you are walking with someone who hurts, Yancey’s posture can guide you.
- Show up, and keep showing up. Your presence says, You are not alone.
- Listen more than you speak. Let the grieving person set the pace.
- Offer practical help. Meals, rides, childcare, snow shoveling, bill paying help.
- Pray briefly, but often. A few sincere words can carry a day.
- Guard against platitudes. If you are unsure, say so, then sit close anyway.
- Remember dates. Grief has anniversaries. A message months later matters.
- Point gently to Christ. Share a verse when welcome, and live the verse always.
Scriptures to carry into the night
- “The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit” (Psalm 34:18).
- “Casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you” (1 Peter 5:7).
- “He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3).
- “My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
- “Even to your old age I am he, and even to hoar hairs will I carry you” (Isaiah 46:4).
Write one of these on a card. Place it on the mirror or by the bed. Let God’s Word answer the questions that wake you at two in the morning.
A closing word, in Yancey’s spirit
If you are in a season of sorrow, do not rush yourself. You have permission to be sad, to ask questions, to need help. The Church is meant to be a safe place for that. Bring your why to the One who wore thorns. Tell him what hurts. Ask him to hold you. He already knows. He has walked the long road before you, and he walks it beside you now.
Suffering is a mystery we will never finally master on this side of the new creation. Yet God has not left us without light. Pain can tell the truth. Lament can deepen faith. Presence can heal. Character can grow. Hope can hold. Above all, Christ is near, and Christ will come. Until that day, let us comfort one another with the comfort we have received, and let us keep whispering the promise that steadies every trembling heart. “He that shall come will come, and will not tarry” (Hebrews 10:37).
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