How to Pray to God in Tragedy & Where is God in Suffering?

Grief can feel like a dam breach, and you feel all this aching sadness for one heartbreak… that gives way to grieving all kinds of collective losses and accumulative sadness.

“If God allowed these tragedies — how can we pray to Him, lean on Him, trust in Him, through these same tragedies?“

I fought tears much of the day yesterday, and then I just let it all come, moved with a deep, deep, sadness over so many tender, heart-shattering tragedies… which broke open some interior dam of memories, for all kinds of tragedies we have ever tried to survive. The moment I witnessed my sister killed. The day the police told me Dad was killed. Sometimes one tragedy can cascade into this emotional torrent of heartache for all kinds of tragedies.

I sat with a Texas friend who attended 3 prayer vigils this weekend with other disoriented and numb Mamas, whose little girl has inconsolably lost her best friend in the inconceivable heartbreak of this weekend, and confessed she wasn’t even sure where to begin talking to God? 

In the midst of the sharp heartache, sometimes, if you’re very still, and very honest, you can begin to feel what is hard to actually articulate:

If God allowed these tragedies — how can we pray to Him, lean on Him, trust in Him, through these same tragedies?

How do we speak to the same God who didn’t speak to the storm? How do we currently run to the One who didn’t still the racing current? 

This is more than a question that’s merely theoretical or theological — it’s actually deeply relational. 

We are all out here with more than a theological puzzle to solve, we are out here with relational pain that we are trying to survive, as Love Himself can feel distant and silent. 

And God beckons all of us who don’t understand, who can hardly stand — to just let Him just hold us. 

And maybe: You pray to God not because you understand Him — but because you need to stand near Him, with Him, because where else in all the universe can we go?

Frankly, sometimes we can find ourselves running to God not because we are ready,  but because we’re wrecked — and where can we go with tears that keep running, that keep falling? 

“God would rather have us wail wildly at Him than for us to apathetically walk away from Him.“

And God pulls all of us closer, all of us who desperately long for a different world, and He lets us honestly wail: “How long, O Lord, how long?” (Psalm 13). And we cry to Him like David, and we howl at Him like Job, “His hand is heavy in spite of my groaning” (Job 23:2) and we’re as honest with Him as His own Son, “Take this cup from Me… My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46) 

God would rather have us wail wildly at Him than for us to apathetically walk away from Him. 

And even though He felt forsaken, Jesus faithfully relied enough on God to say, “My God.”  God only knows that when we just keep wrestling with God, and don’t let go, we get to go to places we’ve longed to know.

Even in agony and deep adversity, Jesus still feels deep intimacy. It’s the wrestle that makes for a stronger faith and a closer bond with God.

And as we just honestly lament and weep, we begin to feel it:

“The deepest comfort is experienced in communion with the God whose tears mingle with ours. “

The One who holds us, is the One who cries with us. Jesus doesn’t stand at the tomb of Lazarus with all the broken hearted and tell them it would all work out — but Jesus breaks down in tears and weeps in deep grief with them. “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows”(Isaiah 53:4).  “Darkness yields to hope because the sorrow of those who suffer … is met by the sorrow of God,” writes Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner. “The empathy of God is itself revealed in the cross of Christ.”

The empathy of God embraces the tragedies of this worlrd and the God of the Cross knows what it feels like to be in crisis — and only the God who had His heart broken can touch us in our heartbreak. “Only the suffering God can help,” comforts Bonhoeffer. Only the Wounded God who weeps can heal our wounds.

Only the God who went to the Cross, who cried out, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?” can reach all who have felt completely godforsaken.

When we can’t understand the why or the ways of God, we can sit with Him till we feel the tears that He too weeps. 

Jesus went to the Cross to “take the death of the godless, and the godforsaken on Himself – so that all the godless and godforsaken can experience communion with Him,” offers theologian, Jürgen Moltmann in The Crucified God. 

The deepest comfort is experienced in communion with the God whose tears mingle with ours. 

“God and suffering are no longer contradictions,” writes Jürgen Moltman, “God’s being is in suffering – and suffering is in God’s being itself … because God is love.”  

When we can’t understand the why or the ways of God, we can sit with Him till we feel the tears that He too weeps. 

“The answer to suffering isn’t found in some mental analysis, but in His very personal presence. “

The One who cries with us in our grief, is the One who can ultimately hear us in our grief. It’s only truly prayer when you give to God all the things that all the pain gave you: all the questions, all the doubts, all the heartbreak, all the despair, all the grief, all of you, given to Almighty Love.  Prayer is more than getting anything – but honestly giving it all to Him.

And maybe that is it: the beginning of a way forward –  isn’t looking for some cold road of logic, but looking to the sure closeness of His presence. The answer to suffering isn’t found in some mental analysis, but in His very personal presence. 

Jesus always has deeper work to do than give explanations for suffering – like giving Himself and deeply entering into our suffering. “He did not love us from a distance. He entered the chaos,” assures the theologian, Fleming Rutledge. God does not give us space and a kind of distant love, but He gives us Himself and enters right into the heart of our suffering. 

God may not give us any answer sheet to our questions  – but He gives us Himself and a clean sheet for all eternity.God may not offer us interpretations of the situation — but He never stops offering us His own groaning Spirit, personally interceding for us (Romans 8:26).

We may not understand why God allows heartbreak and falling tears — but they must be of such significance that God Himself steps into them with us, and surrenders to their work alongside of us. Only the God who cries with us, could ever rise through us.

If we can pound on the chest of a God great enough to question in tragedy, then ours is a God whose ways are far greater and beyond any answer we had in mind.

If we can pound on the chest of a God great enough to question in tragedy, then ours is a God whose ways are far greater and beyond any answer we had in mind.

And I close my eyes, and I return to what anchors, no matter what: our choice is always to either have a crisis of faith, or to have faith in crisis….

And I pray with hurting friends and grieving mamas and this is what now can be done:

Mourning with those who mourn,

Crying with those who cry out for a different kind of world – 

that begins with us – us grieving together, us listening to each other, us holding space for each other – 

and praying honestly to Him who doesn’t always fully explain the why of suffering to us, 

But always fully enters into the suffering with us. 

When the ache feels like more than the heart can carry — try gently picking up a pen and looking for gifts of grace, even here, to count, all from a good and relentlessly loving God who draws near with grace upon grace in our heartache.

With spacious lines to name three gifts each day, and uniquely formatted to daily see how God has shown up with gifts on this day of the month, on all the previous months, Gifts & Gratitudes gently helps grow trust in a God who doesn’t always explain our suffering but who always enters into it with us. Taking pen to paper each day will help trace God’s goodness and keep a record of gratitude. And because of Jesus… there is always, always, always something — Someone — to be thankful for.

If you’re seeking deeper peace, in a world of tender pain…. if you’re looking for hope in the midst of all kinds of hurt… beginning this daily practice of looking for Gifts & Gratitudes helps you see the way forward.

When you don’t know what or who to count on tomorrow… if you start counting Gifts & Gratitudes — your eyes… and heart… begin to open to Who you can always count on…. especially on the hardest days.