purpose in suffering?

Someone said today that, on their hardest days of an ongoing health problem, they "have trouble seeing the purpose of it". I found that terribly sad, and not just because it is an honest expression of deep difficulty.

I remember the days of believing I had to "see the purpose" in my and others' suffering, as if that was a way of keeping faith. To "keep faith" is to pursue love and goodness in the face of an ugly and loveless reality.

Our faithfulness is not defined by our ability to explain the complexities of reality or the motives of God, especially through the lens of a particular religion.
We can add heavily to our own suffering by believing we must hold always to a tightly defined worldview that made sense to us when we were happy.

Faith that helps and heals is of the heart, not of the head.