"Does God Care?" I know of only one way to answer that question, and it has come through my study of the life of Jesus. In Jesus, God gave us a face.
- he wept when his friend Lazarus died
- tears came to him when he looked over Jerusalem
- at the cross 'my god my god why have your forsaken me'

Again, I find it strangely comforting that when jesus faced pain he responded much as I do. He did not pray in the garden, "Oh, Lord, I am so grateful that you have chosen me to suffer on your behalf. I rejoice in the privilege!" No, he experienced sorrow, fear, abandonment, and something approaching even desperation.

"I could never myself believe in God if it were not for the cross......In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statute of Buddha - - his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agony of the world. But each time, after awhile, I have had to turn away. And in imagination, I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross -- nails through his hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me ! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross, which symbolizes divine suffering. The cross of Christ is God's only self justification in such a world as ours." John Stott

On the cross, God judged our sins in the person of his son, and jesus endured the retributive comeback of our wrongdoing. Look at the cross, therefore, and you see what form God's judicial reaction to human sin will finally take. What form is that?

In a word, withdrawal and deprivation of good. On the cross jesus lost all the good that he had before: all spiritual well-being, all enjoyment of god and of created things, all ease and solace of friendship, were taken from him, and in their place was northing but loneliness, pain, a killing sense of human malice and callousness, and a horror of great spiritual darkness.

As believers, we find in the cross of Christ assurance that we, as individuals, are beloved of God: "the Son of God ... loved me and gave himself for me" (Gal 2:20). Knowing this, we are able to apply to ourselves the promise that all things work together for good to them that love God and are called according to his purpose (Rom 8:28). Not just some things, but all things!!

Thus, so far as we are concerned, God is love to us - holy, omnipotent love - at every moment and in every event of every day's life. Even when we cannot see the why and the wherefore of God's dealing, we know that there is love in and behind them, and so we can rejoice always, even when, humanly speaking, things are going wrong. We know that the true story of our life, when known, will prove to be, as the hymn says, "mercy from first to last" - and we are content.