A biblical theology of suffering and hope
Suffering will find you
as it found Him.
But your name is written in heaven,
In light no shadow can touch.
In the beginning,
God breathed into dust
and called it good.
But even before the dust was firm beneath our feet,
a shadow waited.
The Serpent spoke,
and we listened.
The Garden shrank behind flaming swords,
and we stepped into the world
with thorns in our hands
and longing in our bones.
(Genesis 3)
Pain was not the beginning
but it was the consequence of forgetting
who we are.
Still, God did not turn away.
He clothed the shame.
He called the wanderers.
He wrestled with Jacob,
wept with Hannah,
answered Job not with reasons
but with a storm.
He carved covenant into stone,
carried the cries of Israel through wilderness,
and spoke comfort even in exile.
(Exodus, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Lamentations)
And when words would no longer suffice,
The Word became flesh (John 1).
Not safe flesh,
not unmarked flesh
but bruised, bloody, breakable.
He came not to explain suffering
but to inhabit it.
To be born under empire,
to labour in obscurity,
to sweat blood,
to carry a cross.
“He was a man of sorrows,
acquainted with grief.”
(Isaiah 53:3)
The God of the cosmos
entered the wound of the world
and made it His dwelling place.
The cross is not a detour.
It is the way.
“If anyone would follow me,” He says,
“Let them deny themselves,
take up their cross daily,
and follow.”
(Luke 9:23)
This is not cruelty.
It is an invitation.
To union. To dying. To resurrection.
To be baptised not only in water,
but into His death.
(Romans 6:3–5)
And yet
your name is written in heaven.
(Luke 10:20)
This is what He told them, not after comfort, but after conflict.
Not when they were safe, but when they were sent.
When they saw demons fall and darkness tremble,
He said:
“Do not rejoice in this…”
“Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
Because what matters
is not that you wield power,
but that you are known.
Held.
Remembered.
Inscribed in the eternal.
“See, I have engraved you
on the palms of my hands.”
(Isaiah 49:16)
The apostles knew.
They were beaten and blessed.
Scattered and sealed.
They rejoiced to suffer disgrace for the Name. (Acts 5:41)
Paul was no stranger to thorns
in the flesh, in the church, in his prayers.
And yet he wrote:
“We suffer with Him,
that we may also be glorified with Him.”
(Romans 8:17)
“These light and momentary afflictions
are preparing for us
an eternal weight of glory.”
(2 Corinthians 4:17)
Even creation groans, but not in despair,
in birth.
(Romans 8:22)
The Spirit does not take away the ache.
The Spirit groans with us.
Prays when we have no words.
Dwells in the dust with us
until all things are made new.
And they will be.
For He will come again.
Not as a suffering servant,
but as the One who wipes every tear.
(Revelation 21:4)
And He will not forget.
He will open the book, the Lamb’s book
and read the names
that the world has tried to erase.
The names written in heaven
before the foundations of the world.
(Revelation 13:8)
Yours among them.
Suffering is not the evidence that you are lost.
It is the path of the saints,
the shape of the cross,
the echo of Eden groaning toward glory.
And you,
even as you weep,
even when you are wounded—
are not forgotten.
Your name is written in heaven,
in light no shadow can touch.
And the One who knows it
still bears scars of His own.
Scribbling Theology 