Gist of Sermon

Okay briefly my thought re. suffering goes like this:

If we are in Christ (and that could be a whole long discussion), God treats us as His children -- in fact, like His "favourite" child -- His Beloved Son. How did He "treat" Jesus?

He gave Him everything He needed for His mission -- that is, to be betrayed or rejected by friends (and by God Himself on the cross) and crucified by His enemies -- AND THEN to be vindicated eventually.

Why should He treat us any "better" than that? Out of His love for us, He gives us what we need for our mission which may (will?) include betrayal, rejection and suffering -- AND final vindication (eventually).

Probably 30 out of 33 years of Christ's earthly life were reasonably comfortable and fit well with the picture we get of God taking care of the birds by feeding them (forgetting temporarily that many birds starve to death or are killed by predators).

Well, there's more (such as, in what ways might our missions differ from Christ's), but I'll leave it there for now.