Another mass shooting never gets easy to hear about. But when the victims are first graders whose tiny bodies are riddled with bullet wounds, the knowledge goes to the most painful of places. And those of us who have children want to know their safe. We hold them a little harder. Make our words a little kinder. Pray a lot harder.

But in the middle of such unthinkable tragedy the questions fly. The doubts of a God, better yet, a good God at that, grow as rampant as the cries for more laws on gun control. Where is God in such pain? Where is goodness in such inhumanness? Where is a God of peace in such chaos? We would be inhuman ourselves if we didn’t have fleeting questions like these. Yet for some these questions will settle in and strip them of their faith. They will surrender their faith to the evil that has swallowed innocence whole and then a greater sorrow has occurred. A pain with no place to take it. A grief with no place to find solace.

What is left then? Pain must go somewhere. It may burrow deep into our soul for a season, eating away at even our most beautiful places. But it can only burrow so deep and stay buried for so long. Eventually pain, like an abscessed sore will rise to the surface and explode. It will explode through our bitterness, our rage, our addictions, our distractions. But oh, rest assured, pain will reveal itself. And it is never pretty. Not when it is rising only because it is incapable of any longer being hidden.

Yet in such sorrow and moments of asking questions, I had a thought. Could it be that God, knowing the greatest human suffering that would ever be experienced on this earth, would be to lose a child, or to have a child hurt or harmed in some way, willingly made the decision to allow his own heart to suffer such a loss.

He wasn’t forced. He wasn’t coerced. He willingly offered to endure the greatest loss imaginable. And God made the decision having only one child. Not that having multiple children will ever take away the pain of losing a child, but it would surely make the sacrifice an even greater one.

And then God didn’t just offer to surrender His son for the sake of our souls, but He allowed and then endured the horrific and brutal way with which his son was beaten, mocked, and then killed with every sin we would ever commit resting upon Him. A suffering beyond words. An offering even the best of us would spit at. We would not offer such. We’d give our lives, but not our child’s.

Could it be that God was willing to walk this road so that in our darkest days, in days when tiny coffins will be strolled through streets and families lives will never be the same that they can turn to the God of all comfort and grace knowing that He is richly acquainted with ALL of our suffering. There is no greater friend – companion – Father than He.

I do not pretend to know such pain. I do not pretend to know how God reaches into pain at such depths. I am only grateful that He loves us enough to walk with us through it. And He does it all knowing what such pain feels like. Has any one else ever dared to do what He has already done. And what He did…for us…