The only hope for suffering college students

I sat at one of our Wednesday night meetings in awe at the suffering of students around me. The girl to my right has been “excommunicated” from her family’s denomination and cut off from her family’s financial aid by her dad when she shared with them that she has given her life to Jesus Christ in college and has been going to church with us. The girl on my left has come through the ringer of a legalistic family life (to the point that they followed her through the house to see what she was doing wrong), then escaped into alcohol and sex before trusting in Jesus to give her freedom from her past. One of the girls in front of me has had her family ravaged by a decision that they made for the good of others. Another girl has been to 12 funerals in the past 2 years of significant people in her life, including her 23 year old sister, who died slowly of cancer. As the meeting got started (the first in our semester series on suffering), I couldn’t help but think of the girl that was babysitting Maddux. As a sophomore in high school, she listened to her mother shoot herself in the head after they exchanged sharp words.
It is interesting to think that so many shutter at the thought that we tell these students that there is a God who is both sovereign (in control) and good. He cares, he weeps with them, he calls us to weep with them, and he asks them to trust him. Every one of these women is learning what it means to trust in Jesus Christ, the man who was God, and suffered death and punishment so that they won’t have to. He has redeemed them from their pasts and promises to restore them to the source of all joy.  There is no other message of hope.