Sickness is always a battle that is unpleasant, but like anything else in this world, it serves a purpose. Dealing with the sick can be a challenge for many believers, especially when it comes to loved ones and when the sickness is terminal in nature.
Why does God allow sickness to happen? Is He really the one that brings sickness? To believe that God inflicts pain and suffering would not be entirely right. While it is impossible to truly understand the infinite God we serve with our finite thinking, it will always make more sense to believe that God causes only good things in our lives.
The Bible mentions many instances where Satan and demons cause pain and affliction. It was the enemy that gave Job skin disease. Many occasions in the gospels, Jesus drove out demons and healed the sick.
And then there's John 9:3, where Jesus refers to a man who is sick and says, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him." So did God cause this man to experience the affliction of blindness? Although God did say that sin was not the issue of the man, just like in Job's case, God did not Himself bring affliction and suffering but simply allowed them to happen.
Nothing evil can come out of God. Remember that God created even Lucifer himself to be of good nature. The Bible says that every time God created something, He created it to be "good" and even called His best creation, man, "very good."
What brings sickness, affliction, sin and anything that causes destruction is the absence of God's goodness. This happens not because God chooses to be absent in the cases of pain, but because we as sinful and selfish people have pushed God back and out of our life. In His love, He simply gives way to respect the choice that He has freely given us in His grace.
But as always, redemption is made available to all. As we experience pain and affliction, it is only because God wants to magnify the vortex that life becomes when He is not there. God is life, and to be apart from Him can only mean death. That is why He extends the grace of the cross -- so that we may be set free from the emptiness and despair that exist without Him.
Isaiah 53:5 says, "But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed." God desires only good health, wholeness and freedom from sickness for those who choose to believe.
And as true as it is that God allows others to pass on by suffering terminal sickness, we can be assured that the Great Physician has already performed the biggest medical miracle by giving the unfailing medicine that is the cure for eternal separation from God. We may suffer here on earth, but when we have faith in God, He will heal our spirits and give us eternal life.
