Why does God allow Suffering?

"Because it was He who scourged me, and it is He who has had mercy on me." Tobit 11:15

 

The Book of Tobit only appears in the Catholic Bible, and tells of a righteous, law abiding Jew who went through some trials after he buried a dead body. He slept outside, and because of sparrow droppings that fell on his eyes he became blind for several years. It was only when his son came back from a journey with a wife, the angel Raphael and some fish gall which he applied to his father's eyes, that Tobit was able to see again. 

Why does God allow suffering? How many times has this question been asked. How many people have become atheists because they did not find a satisfactory answer? God has a perfect will for all of us, and that is we would become saints and live with Him forever. He assures us that He is always with us, He will never leave us nor abandon us whatever we go through. If we allow Him to be with us in our trials and suffering, He will show His face and He will redeem the hardship. 

"Accept whatever happens to you and show endurance in adverse circumstances. For gold is refined in fire and the elect in the furnace of suffering." Sirach 2:4-5

It is our choice whether our sufferings make us desperate, angry, and hopeless. Or like Viktor Frankl allow God to redeem suffering to give meaning to our existence. "We were at work in a trench. The dawn was grey around us...grey the rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and grey their faces. I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious "YES" in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose!"