Some of you will know that over Easter, Emma and I had some of my family to stay. It was great to be able to catch up with them and show them some of the highlights of Brussels- the market in Stockel Square, the Grand Place, our favourite restaurant, as well as a moving trip to Ypres.
One afternoon I went for a bike ride with James, one of my sister’s twin boys. It was good quality uncle-nephew time, and James for once was being remarkably grown up for an 11- year old. At one point while I was trying to mend my bike chain in somewhere near Tervuren we got talking about God, and as the conversation progressed, he asked me one of the most difficult questions I’ve ever been asked. “Why did God make Mummy deaf?
My sister, Pippa, was born profoundly deaf, because my Mum contracted German measles when she was pregnant. And James wanted to know why God, who is surely so powerful and great that he could stop bad things from happening, should allow something like this to happen, which has affected our family’s life so severely
It’s a question that has been echoing down through history ever since the start. Why? Why does God allow bad things to happen? Why does God allow suffering? And I guess we have all asked it at some point.
Continue reading "Suffering 1 - Suffering and the Beginning" »
