The only thing I can tell you megaxx is that I have been where you are now. For me, it was my father. He was so young, and he feared he would die an early death like his father did from heart disease. We belonged to a church that taught if we claim anything in faith, God will grant it! So, my father stood up in church and claimed healing from hereditary heart disease, and we all agreed. When he did have a heart attack a couple of years later, I believed with all my heart he would not die. We had claimed it by faith. When I was told he died, I was in shock, and the rest of my spiritual life was keenly marked by this moment, by this experience.
The thing for me was I realized God was not on trial in this. My perceptions of him were, the teachings I believed about him were, the way scripture was being interpreted were.
I slowly healed from the terrible wound his dying left on our family, and I emerged from it with a stronger faith in God than I ever had before. With the most gentle and tender love, God led me to understand that one of the most sinful aspects of being human is just how limited we are in our understanding of him, and in particular of what the nature of "good" is. What is good? What is bad? We tend to judge these things by how the make us feel now. But, God has an eternal plan.
I remember seeing this most when I took my first baby in to the pediatrician to have his first vaccinations. The pediatrician asked me to place him on his tummy, hold his arms, and look him in the face. As the doctor poked him, I watched the faithful, smile on his face turn to an expression of pain and confusion. This baby who had only known tenderness, warmth, and satisfaction was now experiencing something that did not make sense to him. I cried and felt I had let him down, mainly because there was no way for me to communicate effectively to him why he needed those shots.
I realized then that life here is very much the same. If we turn to God with our sorrows, he will comfort us, but we might never fully understand the good that can come from suffering. But, he can place the full trust in our hearts that he always does.
The only thing I would add to this is that I'm not really talking about suffering due to poverty and hunger in this world. Everywhere in the Bible we are called to help relieve the suffering of this world. If every person who can responded to the hunger and poverty in this world, we could potentially ease this suffering. The teachings of Jesus often focus on how much it is our responsibility to ease the physical suffering of others here and now.
