So the question for us is: How does being Christian help us with our suffering?

Well, here are six truths about suffering that should prove comforting to any Christian in pain:

God didn’t cause our suffering. God never, ever wants us to suffer. He hates it when we hurt. We hurt because pain is part of the human legacy, period. God could, of course, instantly stop all human suffering, but doing so would involve interfering with our free will, which he loves us too much to do. He allows us to suffer, but that we do is agonizing to him.

Christ, who loves us, knows our suffering. Christ proved his love for us on the cross. And on the cross he also proved to us that he knows the depth of earthy, human suffering. When we call upon Christ to comfort us, we can do so confident that He who heals us understands the full measure of human pain.

Christ wants to love and comfort us. Christ’s purpose is to comfort and heal us. He loves us -- and he proved he loves us. He is our friend, our bringer of peace, our soul’s physician. God cares; he is the opposite of indifferent to our suffering.

Through suffering we can grow in our identification with Christ. As Christians, we want nothing more than to as fully as possible identify and commune with Christ. Christ purposefully suffered for us on the cross. Our suffering provides us with a means of more fully appreciating the depth and reality of that sacrifice.

Suffering clears a way for God. Suffering has a way of clearing our minds of superficialities, of focusing our attention on the core essentialities of life. When we’re suffering, 'Channel God' tends to come in a lot clearer than when we’re not.

God sees our suffering in the context of eternity. A big part of our suffering is the fear that we won’t get better. But God already knows just how fantastically better we’re going to get. We see ourselves as earthly creatures; God sees us, already, as the angels we will become.

If you’re suffering, here are four things your can do to help yourself heal:

Pray. Ask for God’s peace. Don’t be shy about asking for it; don’t be hesitant about asking for it; don’t in any way qualify your desire for it. God is there for the suffering. And He can bring to you what you cannot deliver to yourself; God, and only God, can make 2 + 2 = 5. When suffering, you need something extra, something beyond yourself, something unfathomable: You need a miraculous calming of your waters. Calming stormy waters is what God does. Ask, and you shall receive.