Be still: Lord, I pray that you would give me eyes to see you, ears to hear you and a heart to receive your Word today. Amen
Read: Revelation 9:1-12
They were not allowed to kill them but only to torture them for five months… In those days people will seek death but will not find it. (v5)
Encounter: This is a difficult passage.
There’s no getting around it. Revelation describes people experiencing intense suffering and torture, and somehow God doesn’t seem to put a stop to it. And that raises a question we might be afraid to ask: how can a good God allow this to happen?
Sometimes we can try to explain suffering away too quickly. 'God has a plan.' 'Everything happens for a reason.' But standing in front of a passage like this, those answers can feel painfully inadequate.
The Bible doesn’t give us a simple explanation for every moment of suffering. But it does give us something that I believe no other religion permits – permission to wrestle.
That doesn't make the suffering good. And it doesn't mean we have to stop asking 'Why?' But perhaps when we read a passage like today's, we aren't supposed to find a comfortable explanation for suffering. I think it’s supposed to provoke questions and a desire to go deeper with God, to wrestle. But there’s also an invitation to learn to live in mystery and tension. Perhaps its intention is to draw us towards a longing for the day when suffering is no more. For the day when Jesus comes and wipes every tear.
The Christian hope isn't that we will eventually understand every terrible thing that happens; it is that one day God will end suffering, defeat evil and make all things new.
Apply: Is there something about suffering that you’ve been afraid to ask God about? Bring the honest question to him today. You don't have to have the answer before you pray.
Devote: God, help me to trust your character while I wrestle with the things I cannot understand.