My beloved first-born son and his precious wife have such a challenge with two special needs sons. As I grieved for them recently on a family holiday, the question gripped me, “Are you more compassionate than their heavenly Father?” Would I be like the one who snipped the restrictive opening of the chrysalis of an Emperor moth, only to watch the ease of the creature’s exit turn to tragedy? The struggles were needed to force the expansion of the wings, without which the moth could never fly. It has been well said that God had one Son without sin, but none without suffering. Those who question what has been called the “hardness of God’s love” unwisely fancy themselves more merciful than “the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort” (2 Cor 1:3). I don’t know what aspect of Christ’s loveliness is being worked into the characters of those I see suffering, but I know they will consider it to have been worth it when they at last are brought “to glory” (Heb 2:10).