At age 17 my friend Marian decided to stop believing in God. There had been a horrific school bus accident in her town. Kids were killed. She didn’t want a God who would let that happen. And she still feels that way fifty years later.

You’ve heard stories like that, I’m sure. In response to tragedy, many people reconfigure their belief systems. Long-held assumptions are jarred loose. Some turn to faith in such times; others turn away.

Some will come to you for answers.

You might already be fielding questions in the wake of the Orlando shooting. Couldn’t an all-powerful God find some way to prevent such violence? Similar questions arise after plane crashes and earthquakes. Caused by human intent, equipment failure, or an “act of God,” these tragedies have different levels of explainability, but the blame often comes back to the Creator. In the minds of some questioners, God is either responsible or irresponsible.

The Other Orlando Tragedy

There was another shooting in Orlando, a day earlier and a few blocks away from the Pulse Club disaster. Promising young singer Christina Grimmie was murdered after a concert. For me, this struck closer to home. She was a Jersey girl who grew up in a church a few miles from mine. I play ball with a close friend of her family. In our post-game prayer time, he seemed shell-shocked. “Pray for that family. They shouldn’t have to go through this.”

Maybe there’s a teachable moment there, but I’m not sure what to say to him.

At one time in my life, I could plow through theodicy with the best of them. Holy God. Fallen world. Free will. Already and not yet. Kingdom come. Then I started seeing people’s eyes glaze over. Maybe I was answering the question they asked, but it wasn’t the real question of their hearts.

So I stopped. I mastered the shrug, the shaking of the head. Weep with those who weep. I was determined not to trivialize their grief by turning it into an intellectual equation. “I don’t know,” I would say. “It’s a tough thing to go through. God is mysterious sometimes.”

But now I want to offer more. I’m beginning to think there’s a place for valuable ministry between those two extremes. I still want to avoid “easy answers,” but are there any answers I can give? Does the Bible provide any comfort or hope in times of grief? I believe it does. So how can I share that without minimizing the pain or overstating the promise?

Songs of Suffering

While there are many Bible passages that speak to the theology of suffering, those that dig into the emotional experience are mostly in the book of Psalms. So let’s focus on that book as we work toward a sensible and sensitive approach.

1. Use Psalms of Lament.

“Why are you hiding from us?” the psalmist prays. “Don’t forget our suffering and trouble! We fall crushed to the ground; we lie defeated in the dust” (Psalm 44:24-25 GNT). No sugar-coating here. And there are dozens of psalms like this, crying out to God about various crises in life. (See Psalms 10, 13, 43, 55.)

These laments give us tracks for our own grief. If these biblical writers could pound on heaven’s door like this, then we can too.

2. Find God’s Presence.

“Even if I go through the deepest darkness, I will not be afraid, LORD, for you are with me” (Psalm 23:4a GNT). The best-known psalm in the world has more than frolicking sheep. It travels through the “valley of the shadow of death” (KJV). In our counseling, let’s not rush through that darkness. In times of crisis, people camp out in that valley.

But the heart of the promise here is that the Lord is with us. It might seem that God has abandoned us—and several of the laments cry out about this—but he has not. He may seem silent, but he’s there.

3. Recognize the Suffering of Christ.

Flip back a page and read Psalm 22 in light of the Crucifixion. At one level, it’s a psalmist describing his own torment, but it uncannily applies to Jesus’s experience on the cross (Matthew 27:46). Go also to Isaiah 53, to the Gospel accounts of the Passion like John 18–19, and to 1 Peter 2:21-25. Try to grasp the idea that the Lord understands our suffering because he himself has suffered.

This is not a competition—“You think you’ve suffered, well, look at Jesus!” On the contrary, it can bring the troubled person into a fellowship of suffering with Jesus. In times of crisis, people search for meaning; and there’s a hint of meaning here. Because of our suffering, we can know Jesus better.

4. Follow the Track of the Psalms.

Even the psalms of lament tend to go somewhere. There’s a progression, sometimes into a greater understanding of God’s ways. It’s very clear in Psalm 73. After grousing about the success of the godless fat cats, the Psalmist went to the Temple. “Then I understood what will happen to the wicked” (Psalm 73:17b GNT).

It’s not always that clear, but these psalms invite us on a journey, and that’s what we can do for the sufferers we talk with: “Read the book of Psalms until you find a road that matches yours, and then travel it.”