Open your Bible and read John 11:17-44
“Jesus wept.”
John 11:35 · ESVStart with the hardest one. If God is good and powerful, why is a child in a cancer ward right now.
Nobody has a tidy answer for that, and anyone who hands you one quickly has not sat with real suffering. Christians disagree about how to hold it. Some appeal to free will, some to a broken creation, some simply refuse to speculate. Honest people land in different places.
What this chapter gives you is not an explanation. Martha meets Jesus with a complaint. If you had been here, my brother would not have died. He does not correct her. He does not lecture her about a bigger plan.
He cries. Standing at the grave of a friend he is about to raise, knowing how it ends, he still breaks down. Whatever else that means, God is not distant from this. He got inside it.
Do this today
Say out loud, to the empty room, the thing you would accuse God of if he were listening.
An honest thing to say to God
“If you are real, this is what I hold against you. I want an honest answer.”