Your cell group leader just fell on the stairs and sprained their ankle just before the study starts. Do you

(a) Quietly ask if they haven't done a quiet time today?
(b) Publicly suggest they search their heart for some hidden sin?
(c) Ask if they have something in their life that is a stumbling block?
(d) Pray that God will show the group where they are at on the staircase of life?
(e) Ask if they'd like you to take the study?

Read Isaiah 53:4-8

Listen to music or sing something focusing on Jesus's love and sacrifice, eg

He was pierced for our transgression
Here is Love Vast as the Ocean
Such Love

(i) Share any events in your experience or in the world which have caused you to ask 'why did that happen?' What did you think of God? In A Grief Observed CS Lewis wonders whether God could be a cosmic sadist. Have you ever felt this?

(ii) What does Jesus say about why suffering happens? See Luke 12:1, John 8:1-5.

(iii) Do you ever feel that natural disasters and diseases happen because the world had been made wrong? That it is not fit for purpose? That we should send it back and ask for a better one? Read some sections of Job 38 and 39. What do these passages tell us?

(iv) Does suffering ever make you doubt God's love? What evidence do we have of God's love?

(v) So how should we respond to suffering in the world? Read Matthew 25:31-46, 1 John 3:16-20.