A long quote..... Maybe it will help someone.

I'm getting over what started as a bad cold, and turned into Pneumonia. I haven't been this sick in 15 yrs. at least! I've missed two weeks of work, but am feeling better this morning, at last.
Anyhow, since it really bothers me that Christians seem to lack answers to the question of suffering (when the answer is given in scripture, and somewhat confirmed in science), I'm going to quote at length from Michel Horton's book, In The Face of God. I recommend the book incidentally (my dad told me about it). I'll warn you though, it has to be read slowly! It's "thick"...as opposed to long...This book is about intimacy with God, and a critique of modern theology, particularly it's gnostic tendency.



"Even in mainstream evangelical circles, there does not seem to be a clear theology of suffering. And when people actually encounter a crisis, they discover the shallow platitudes and cliches they have heard do not suffice. They begin to question God and His ways. They have nothing beyond their agonized questions to hold them fast.
We cannot know the divine purpose for specific encounters with pain. However, the message of the cross provides us with some profoundly helpful ways of understanding and coping with the whole notion of suffering. The apostle Paul, of course, experienced more than his share of suffering. He was beaten, imprisoned, stoned, and as a result lost most of his eyesight. He also suffered great emotional and spiritual pain as he received rather regular news that one of his church plants ended up playing around with other gospels. "I have often been cold and naked...I face daily pressure of my concern for all the churched. Who is weak and I do not feel weak? (see 2 Cor. 11:27-28)

Is this the sort of reporting one should hear from an apostle? Should he not be triumphant, hiding his own problems in order to magnify the power, joy, happiness, and success that God gives to faithful servants? How will Paul's readers find sufficient motivation and inspirational example for there own lives amid such "negative confessions"?

Instead he says "If I must boast I will boast of the things that show my weakness." (v. 30)...And "When I am weak, then I am strong." (v. 10).

What kind of theology recommends suffering? Yet that is what Paul is actually suggesting-that believers look assiduously for opportunities to be weak. This is no superficial masochism that the apostle is outlining, no Stoic "stiff upper lip" theology. Rather it springs from his theology of the cross..."