Why does God allow suffering if He loves us according to faith traditions?

This question has haunted believers for centuries, and Rumi knew it intimately. He didn't offer easy answers—instead, he suggested that suffering itself becomes a language between the soul and the Divine. When you experience loss or pain, something in you breaks open that was sealed before. That opening is where love actually enters. Rumi teaches us that God's love isn't about preventing pain. It's about meeting you in the pain, the way a beloved meets a lover's longing. The ache you feel? That's not punishment or abandonment. That's the sign you're alive, that you care, that you're capable of transformation. The theodicy question—why evil exists—has no logical answer that will satisfy your grief. But there's another way to hold it: suffering can become a doorway to deeper compassion, to understanding others' wounds, to spiritual maturation. Not because it's good that you suffer, but because you have the capacity to transform even that into meaning. When you're in the thick of it, don't demand an explanation from the heavens. Instead, ask: What is this breaking in me trying to teach? How am I being remade? The answer often comes not as theology but as lived transformation—as you become softer, wiser, more human.