Psalm 103:8, Yahweh is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
“What?!” many will say. “God is not merciful and gracious! If He were gracious, He would not permit all the suffering in the world. Look at the alcoholic who beats his wife! Look at the children who are subjected to pedophiles! Look at the increasing number in mass shootings! If God is almighty, then He is unmerciful since He can look down on all this and permit it to take place. How, then, can you know God is merciful and gracious?”
Indeed, how can we know God is merciful and gracious? We know God is merciful and gracious because Jesus was merciful and gracious. I cannot think of anyone more merciful than Jesus. No one else has cared for you so much that they were willing to die for your sinful, damned condition. Jesus looked upon our situation and He was not content to remain in Heaven. Thus, He came down, humiliated Himself as a man and in His suffering and death, and rose from the dead. He came down into our suffering and suffered the ultimate suffering, with all our sufferings laid upon Him.
Every miracle Jesus performed—especially the miracle of His resurrection—were pre-figurative signs of what will occur in our human bodies and souls. Yes, we suffer now, but upon His return we shall experience a complete transformation in body and soul into perfection. Recall any miracle Jesus performed in His earthly ministry; that was merely a foretaste of the complete healing you and I shall experience upon His return.
It is no wonder, then, why Paul calls this life a “light momentary affliction,” for it is “preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Corinthians 4:17-5:1).
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