A Friend Was Calling a Christian Science practitioner in the middle of the night. They had been praying together for healing of a heart problem. "I don't know if we should continue to pray to heal this," the friend said. "I think God is punishing me for something I've done. Maybe suffering is God's will for me—my suffering will make me a better person, won't it?"
"Suffering never leaves us at the point where it found us," the practitioner answered, "yet God is never the cause of it. His very nature as infinite good precludes the possibility."
The popular United States television program Touched by an Angel has dealt with this subject thoughtfully on occasion. There was one episode involving a mother who felt that God had been punishing her because she'd had a son out of wedlock; the child was handicapped.
