Book Review - Where is God When It Hurts

If you've followed me long enough, you know my heart beats for those who have experienced deep loss. If that's you, when your heart is ready, I encourage you to read Where Is God When It Hurts, by Philip Yancy.

I wish I had found this book years ago when I was a young adult asking that age-old question, “Why?” “Why, God?” “Why all this pain and loss?”

Where Is God When It Hurts attempts to answer life’s most angst-filled cry. This book is incredibly honest and confronts the pain and sorrow each of us experiences or will most inevitably experience.

The author’s reasoning is reminiscent of C.S. Lewis — careful, probing, and grounded in biblical wisdom, as he turns over every difficult question surrounding pain. His firsthand research with people suffering from leprosy and paralysis adds compassion, credibility, and vivid insight.

Yancey opens the book by taking readers inside a leper colony, illustrating a central theme: pain, though unwelcome, serves an essential purpose. Without the ability to feel pain, the body is vulnerable to severe injury, as seen in those whose illness robs them of sensation. He extends this physical reality into a spiritual metaphor, suggesting that suffering can also protect and shape the soul. In this way, pain becomes a tool for teaching, strengthening, and transforming believers toward Christlikeness.

Later, when Yancy considers the plight of Job in the Old Testament, he makes this most helpful conclusion: “The biblical pattern is so consistent that I must conclude the important issue facing Christians who suffer is not, ‘Is God responsible?’ but ‘How should I react now that this terrible thing has happened?” This insight reframes suffering from a question of blame to a call for faithful response. I too, eventually came to this hope-filled and life-changing conclusion on my own, after years and years of choosing to trust God even in my losses.

An example of this trust in God is illustrated when Yancy personally meets with two people who became paralyzed at a young age. One continued to wait for healing that never came, holding onto faith but remaining largely passive, never fully embracing the voice or story their experience could offer.

The other eventually accepted their circumstances and chose to use their remaining abilities to build a meaningful life — and the impact they made was profound. Through this contrast, Yancey shows how our response to suffering can either limit or expand the purpose that emerges from it.

The book is thorough in its exploration of pain, weaving together personal conversations and scientific insights. Yancey examines the experiences of Holocaust survivors, the long endurance of parents raising severely disabled children, the psychology of fear, helplessness, and hope, the church’s role in suffering, and the promise of heaven. These perspectives deepen the reader’s understanding of pain as both a human and spiritual reality.

Yancey also reflects on the familiar biblical passages Christians often turn to in times of hardship — James 1:2–4, 1 Peter 4:1–13, 1 Peter 1:6–7, and 2 Corinthians 7:8–9, among others. These verses reveal God’s heart for a suffering world and remind believers that trials can cultivate perseverance, hope, and spiritual maturity. Far from being mere comfort phrases, they carry the power to implant hope and strength into every believer's heart.

And that's my prayer for you as you navigate life's trials, that you may know without a doubt that God has not abandoned you, but is just a whispered invitation away. He will join you in your sorrow, nourishing your soul, providing hope and strength to persevere. Why? Because He made you and loves you and endured an agonizing death as a sin offering so that we might have eternal fellowship with Him in glory.

If you would like to talk through your experience with God and pain, please don't hesitate to reach out to me at dianna.l.lanser@gmail.com.