Caring Father

From J.E. Tada's More Precious than Silver

Besides sin, God has a strong distaste for suffering. God is truly grieved at how we've ruined the world and abused each other...."He does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men," Lam 3.33.
One day, very soon,....God will close the curtain on sin, sweeping suffering and all its pain and tears away forever. Until that time, He permits what He hates to accomplish something mysterious and wonderful that He loves. Christ in us.

[A child permanently injured by chemicals] has no concept of what life could have been had he not disobeyed, his father will carry the pain of his son's disobedience for the rest of his life. Blinded by our fallen nature, we have only the vaguest notion of what consequences of our disobedience in our lives. But God has complete understanding. He sees not only what is and will be but also what might have been.

Knowing how hard it is for many parents to discipline their children at all due to the love they feel for them...I can see how it would be hard for God to allow suffering to go on. But really...until the End of Time is here, it has to go on. We just wouldn't look for Him or to Him otherwise, because we don't see Him all the time. We can too easily forget that God is there. That God exists and cares...but when we face terrible trials, we find out how caring a Father He really is, and how He stays right there, sitting up through the watches of the night with us. Sometimes we are foolish enough to take on the trial ourselves. We might even make it for a while. But I guarantee that you will get too tired soon, and need to crawl into Abba Father's lap and let Him run the show. 
I always think about the story of Lucy asking Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia when on the Island of the Duffers in the third book....Lucy asks Aslan if she couldn't know what MIGHT have happened...and Aslan replied sorrowfully that no, no one was allowed to know what MIGHT have been. 
It's a weird thought to think that my choice to snap at someone irritably makes a huge difference. Every choice and action we pick makes a huge difference...we don't get a "do over" on choices. Makes me want to think on them more, what words I say, things I pick to do. Pray continually that I make godly choices. 
I was so thankful to God the other day, and I am loving that the more thankful I am to God, the more thankful I get! Sounds redundant, I know...but I love how much joy in thankfulness I have been discovering by thanking God for little things---the things that really are so special and we ignore. Health, home, family...we take them for granted. My, though...once you start thanking God for them, you just find yourself going on and on and on about blessings, and nearly crying because even during the hardest of times, there He is, still doing amazing, loving, wonderful things for you!