It's easy in all the current chaos and cultural mayhem to feel that God must have abandoned us. How could an all seeing, benevolent presence allow the suffering that occurs in our current world. This is a classic question that humans have asked since we became self aware. Over the centuries, there have been many answers offered like " only the sinful that suffer," to "God has nothing to do with the shortcomings of human beings." In my work with Ken Wilber, he offered another perspective.
IF as all the religious traditions of this world claim that "everything is spirit" then even our suffering has to be included. You might ask, but why would spirit want us to suffer. There is no easy answer to this, other than our lives are lived in the creative tension between love and suffering. Anyone that has been through a rough patch untimely will say afterwords that they learned a lot about themselves and others being challenged in this way. From a personal development development perspective we call it "growth."
Try this the next time your feel yourself constricting. No matter what you think is happening, ask yourself, what is spirit up to in this moment? I have found it doesn't cause me to suffer less, but I am less angry about why it's this happening to me and more aware of the way suffering positively stretches me towards fuller aliveness.
If you want to see what Ken Wilber and other spiritual practitioners have to say on this subject, access the "Animating Force" of this web site. In that section you will find many Christian and Buddhist teachers address suffering. Much love, David