“Enormous hailstones, each weighing about a hundred pounds, fell from the sky on people, and they blasphemed God for the plague of hail because that plague was extremely severe.” Revelation 16:21 CSB https://bible.com/bible/1713/rev.16.21.CSB

When life is hard, we ask why it is so hard. We often blame God for our troubles. We think that if He is truly all-powerful and loving, He would keep trouble from our lives. Underlying this thinking is the idea that I am above God and that He exists to protect me and to bless my life. But why would He do that? We blame God for our troubles but make no effort to please God. A perfect, holy, and righteous God requires the same from His creation, yet this is not our goal, nor is it true of our conduct or character. Yet, in our audacity, we insist He meets our needs and keeps us from evil. Evil comes upon us for one of four reasons. We bring it upon ourselves because we do what is displeasing to God and reap the consequences. Others do what displeases God, and we suffer for their actions. The earth itself suffers under our rule and so turns against us with calamities that bring us great pains. The enemy of God, satan and his minions, seeks to steal, kill, and destroy humanity. The world does appear out of control and without the strong hand of God upon it. We asked for this when our predecessors abandoned God to be god themselves. This is how we continue to live as we do our own thing and resist the commands of God. Pain is God’s gift to us to cause us to seek healing. Pain in life is to move us toward Him, Who truly loves us, proving so by living among us and suffering with us to provide a hope and a future free from all this pain and suffering. The means for entering His new world is by humility, confession of our wrongdoing here, and turning to obedience as much and as best as we can with His help for the remaining days we have while waiting joyfully for that day when all will be restored to God’s control. Then, all pain and suffering will cease forever. God will return to rule a new earth where love, joy, peace, and abundance forever will be the experience. Until then, our suffering is to bring us to restoration with Him, causing us to realize we need His rule and not our own to live healthy and happy lives.