Young Adult Sorrows Need an Ancient Remedy

The auditorium was cold. Goose bumps rose on my bare arms, and I reached out to clasp the hands of the women across from me. They were older than me, their faces tanned and wrinkled and kind and unknown. We’d been paired with strangers to pray for each other. They asked me to share my requests first.

“Well,” I began. “My husband and I have been through a lot in the last year or two. We’re settling into our first year of marriage and recovering from some old hurts.”

A quizzical look met my words, so I paused, waited. One of the ladies arched an eyebrow. “But you’re too young to know suffering.”

Her friend grinned. “Yeah—brace yourself.”

The dark of the room swaddled sudden tears. I swallowed hard and urged them to share next as the words rang in my head, hovering on the sound waves of the keyboard chords, caught in the light flickering from the jumbotrons.

But you’re too young to know suffering. Brace yourself.

Gen Z Knows Suffering

They meant no ill will. There’s a grain of truth in their words. However, they didn’t know my story.

They didn’t know that my husband and I spent our engagement in hospital rooms across the country, waiting with pinched and pale faces for news from yet another doctor. They didn’t know the details of the chronic, life-threatening illness that resulted in emergency, lifesaving surgery two months before our original wedding date. They didn’t know about the miscarriages. They didn’t know about the bullying, the breakups, the deaths in the family.

Being young doesn’t preclude us from suffering. Gen Z is old enough to experience not merely online evils but real-life suffering common to the human experience. We’re old enough to have marital struggles. We’re old enough to lose children. We’re old enough to get laid off or struggle to find work. We’re old enough to have family members die of old age.

We suffer like everyone else. But perhaps what’s different for Gen Z is our default response. Bad habits formed during what sociologist Jonathan Haidt would call “the great rewiring of childhood” may affect how we process and heal.

We suffer like everyone else. But perhaps what’s different for Gen Z is our default response.

This was true for me. Instead of pressing into community, I isolated. Instead of reading the Word, I scrolled Instagram to distract myself. Instead of praying, I consulted Google for hours, searching for the answers to questions far beyond its ability to explain: Why the illness? Why the miscarriage? Why us? Why now? Why, God?

Raised in a world where information is as close as the scroll and tap of your thumb, the silence was loud, the grief suffocating, the waiting excruciating. But I eventually found hope in Jesus, the suffering Savior. He is the answer for the questions that plague suffering Gen Z.

Man of Sorrows

As my husband and I navigated suffering on multiple fronts, friends and family prayed for us, and slowly, slowly, I cracked the Word open. A friend suggested I study Job. But as I read the story, God seemed cruel. I slammed the Word shut again—and then repented. This began a cycle that repeated longer than I would like to admit. But months later, something finally clicked.

God is not cruel.

I didn’t see it at first in Job’s story. I saw it tucked in a prophecy, dense and star-studded and rich. Isaiah is speaking to God’s grieving people about a coming Messiah when he asks,

Who has believed what he has heard from us?
And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? . . .
He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows. (Isa. 53:1–4)

This man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, was no mere man. No—he was whom Adam, Job, Abraham, Moses, David, and Isaiah all pointed to: the Savior of the world. The Savior who bears our griefs and carries our sorrows, regardless of our age.

Jesus demonstrates God’s love for us, that when I was still a sinner, still wrestling and doubting and wondering, he died for me. Jesus went through pain and suffering of the worst possible sort for me, for us. Something clicked. Because of Jesus, I could know: God is not cruel.

So I went back to Job. At the end of his questioning, Job is granted an audience with God. God doesn’t explain Job’s sorrow or pull back the curtain of heaven and retell the throne-room conversation with Satan. Instead, he gives Job a greater glimpse of his own power, authority, and perfection. As a result, Job repents in dust and ashes, having uttered things “too wonderful” for him to understand (42:3). Job didn’t need the answer to his “Why, God?” He needed to know more about who God is.

The same is true for us, Gen Z. We don’t need God to answer all our anxious whys and what ifs. We need to see him more clearly for who he is.

Jesus Is the Answer

Because of Christ—Immanuel, God with us—Christians today have something Job didn’t have: assurance that God is present. We know we follow a Lord who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. We know that he promises us that one day, he’ll wipe every tear from our eyes, and sorrow and death will be no more. We know, too, that despite the bad habits of Gen Z still threatening to suck us in, we have something greater: a suffering Savior for young sufferers too.

I eventually found hope in Jesus, the suffering Savior. He is the answer for the questions that plague suffering Gen Z.

Jesus is the answer to anxiety. He calls all who are weary and heavy-laden to come and find rest in him (Matt. 11:28). He calls us to cast all our anxieties on him, because he cares for us (1 Pet. 5:7). He tells us not to worry about what we’ll eat or wear or do; our Father in heaven knows we need all these and more (Matt. 6:31–32).

Jesus is the answer to isolation. He invites us to commune with him. In Jesus’s death on the cross, the veil was torn. Christians now have full access to the throne room of grace, where we can approach boldly in our time of need (Heb. 4:16). Because of Jesus, we can enter as adopted sons and daughters and share in the family he leaves us on earth: his body and Bride, the church.

Jesus is the answer to distraction. He calls us to fix our minds on him (Heb. 12:2), to pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17), to let our requests be made known to God (Phil. 4:6)—not Google or Reddit or X or Instagram.

Jesus is the answer to false hopes. He tells us he’s the way, the truth, the life: Nothing else can satisfy what we’re searching so desperately for (John 14:6).

Jesus is the Rock of Ages. I think of the old hymn “Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me.” It begs a safety we all crave when sorrow strikes: “Let me hide myself in thee.” Because of who Jesus is and what he has done, we can run and hide in him. We can rest in the Father’s goodness, made incarnate in the life and death of his Son. We can cling to the Rock of Ages, knowing that even if our grip falters, his right hand upholds us forever (Ps. 63:8).

Gen Z, let’s heed Paul’s words in 1 Timothy 4:12: “Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example”—even in how you suffer—“in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.” May we look to Christ, our suffering Savior, for the answers we seek. He understands our sorrow, our anxiety, and our grief.