God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)
[Jesus] was busy, but never in a way that made Him frantic, anxious, irritable, proud, envious, or distracted by lesser things... Jesus knew the difference between urgent and important. He understood that all the good things He could do were not necessarily the things He ought to do.
The real sting of suffering is not misfortune itself, nor even the pain of it or the injustice of it, but the apparent God-forsakenness of it. Pain is endurable, but the seeming indifference of God is not…We think of Him as an armchair spectator, almost gloating over the world’s suffering, and enjoying His own insulation from it. It is this terrible caricature of God that the cross smashes to smithereens.
