Have you ever held a crying friend and had no words? Or maybe you've been that person, tears flowing, wondering where God is in all of this? I have. We all have. Pain has a way of making even the strongest faith wobble.
As evidenced in The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis gets it. Before he became one of Christianity's most beloved voices, he was an atheist who looked at suffering and said, "No loving God would allow this." But God had other plans for him – and maybe for you too, as you wrestle with these same questions.
When God's Love Takes Unexpected Forms
Pain insists upon being attended to. Lewis wrote these words not from an ivory tower, but from the trenches of real suffering. He lost his mother as a child. Later, he would lose his beloved wife Joy to cancer, documenting that journey in A Grief Observed. When he talks about pain, he's not theorizing – he's testifying.
"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world."
Think about that for a moment. What if the very thing that makes us question God's love is actually an expression of it? It's like when my daughter was young and needed a shot at the doctor's office. She couldn't understand why I would allow someone to hurt her. But I knew something she didn't – that momentary pain was protecting her from something much worse.
We've bought into a Netflix-and-chill version of love that says true love means keeping someone comfortable at all costs. But God's love isn't about our comfort – it's about our transformation.
Remember Joseph? Sold into slavery by his own brothers, falsely accused, thrown into prison. Years of suffering that made no sense at the time. But later he would tell those same brothers, "You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good" (Genesis 50:20).
Lewis doesn't offer cheap answers. Instead, he helps us see that our pain isn't meaningless. Every tear, every sleepless night, every cry of "Why?" is being woven into a larger story of redemption.
Imagine sitting with a friend who had lost her child. No theological explanation could touch that kind of pain. Now, imagine she runs a ministry helping other grieving parents today. Her pain became a platform for God's grace. That's not a happy ending – it's a holy one.
Finding God in Our Pain
Here's where Lewis brings it home: Christianity is the only worldview where God doesn't stand apart from our suffering – He enters into it. Jesus wasn't just theorizing about pain from heaven. He experienced it. Betrayal. Loneliness. Physical torture. The very heart of our faith is a God who suffers.
"He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?" (Romans 8:32)
So what do we do with our pain? Lewis suggests something radical: instead of seeing it as evidence that God doesn't love us, what if we saw it as evidence that He's actively involved in our lives?
This doesn't make the pain hurt less. But it gives it meaning. It transforms our suffering from something that happens to us into something that happens for us.
Maybe you're reading this in a season of pain. Maybe you're that person I described at the beginning, tears falling, wondering where God is. Can I share something with you? He's closer than you think. Not despite your pain, but often right in the middle of it.
Pain isn't the absence of God's love – sometimes it's the evidence of it. Not because suffering itself is good, but because God is good enough and powerful enough to work through even our deepest hurts to accomplish His purposes in us.
Remember: Jesus' own disciples looked at the cross and saw only defeat. But God saw resurrection. What looks like an ending to us might just be God's beginning.
What pain are you wrestling with today? How might viewing it through the lens of God's transformative love change your perspective? Sometimes the bravest prayer isn't "Lord, take this away" but "Lord, help me trust You in this."
About C.S. Lewis
Born into a world of books and imagination in Belfast, Ireland, Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) walked a path that many of us know well – from faith through doubt and back to faith again. After losing his mother at age nine and wrestling with the harsh realities of World War I, Lewis abandoned his childhood faith, declaring himself an atheist. But God wasn't finished with him.
Through friendships with believers like J.R.R. Tolkien and his own deep wrestling with life's biggest questions, Lewis found himself, in his words, "surprised by joy" – drawn back to faith by God's persistent love. He went on to become one of Christianity's most beloved voices, writing not just The Problem of Pain, but works like Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, and The Chronicles of Narnia that continue to light the way for seekers and believers alike.
Lewis wrote not from an ivory tower but from the trenches of real suffering – through war, personal loss, and eventually the death of his beloved wife Joy. Today, his words continue to offer hope to those walking through their own valleys of shadow, reminding us that our pain is never meaningless in God's economy of grace.
