There’s nothing that challenges faith in a loving God more than the problem of pain. C.S. Lewis said that of all the things that come to us in life, pain is the one thing guaranteed to get our attention. Joys and pleasures come and go without causing any deep thought. But pain has a way of focusing our minds on what is really important. He called it ‘God’s megaphone.’
Commenting on this, Professor Bruce Waltke described how he once rescued a bird from a cat. Even though its wing was broken, it struggled madly to escape. But the next day he took his young daughter to hospital to get a needle. She was afraid too, but didn’t struggle. She just held him tightly round the neck. He said, ‘It made me realise that pain ought to make us react more like a sick child holding onto a loving father, than a frightened bird trying to escape.