In the days leading up to the death of my three-year-old son, Daniel, God deeply assured me of his gracious care for my family and me. One late night, I sat alone with my son in the intensive care unit, my Bible in hand. Knowing he had only a few days left, my heart was overwhelmed with grief. My chest felt constricted, as if the weight of impending loss were pressing down harder with each passing moment. I was desperate for a word from God.

Not knowing where to turn, I flipped open my Bible and found myself in Isaiah 53. My eyes immediately landed on these words: “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4). Isaiah’s words washed over my anguished heart like gentle rain on parched soil, bringing much-needed relief and a renewed sense of God’s comforting presence in my distress.

But that late-night mercy didn’t last.

Several days later, when the hour of Daniel’s death arrived, my wife and I knelt by his bed, praying and seeking to comfort our son. My heart was heavy with grief, yet I trusted in God’s providence as I held Daniel’s arm and softly ran my fingers through his hair. But when his heart beat for the final time, I was shocked to find my comfort gone, leaving me “so utterly burdened beyond [my] strength that [I] despaired of life itself” (2 Corinthians 1:8). In the hours that followed, I wrestled with how the feeling of God’s nearness could so quickly give way to a sense of God-forsakenness.

How are we to interpret such paradoxical experiences? Assurance seems inseparable from God’s comforting presence, while doubt appears inevitable when we feel abandoned by him.

Always a Light

In The Lord of the Rings, as Sam and Frodo trudge through the desolate land of Mordor, burdened by the Shadow and on the brink of despair, J.R.R. Tolkien reveals a profound truth hidden within their hardship:

There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark [peak] high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. (922)

The lesson is clear: just as Sam found hope in the distant, once-hidden twinkle of a star, there is always a light — often beyond our immediate view — that points to a greater reality. Though sometimes concealed in “the forsaken land,” this light is no less real for being hidden. Like the star that pierced Sam’s despair, it reminds us that our suffering, though real and painful, is not the final word.

In the last days of my son’s life, I experienced what Paul calls “the sufferings of this present time” (Romans 8:18) — deeply harrowing trials that, though shrouded in darkness, are held within the sovereign care of a God who promises that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

Hidden Hope, Present Pain

Twice in Romans 8:18–19, Paul uses the word revealed. He first speaks of a glory that is not yet visible to us — a promise that remains hidden beyond our present sufferings (Romans 8:18). Then he describes creation eagerly awaiting the moment when the true identity of the sons of God will be made manifest (Romans 8:19). This dual emphasis on what is still concealed highlights the profound reality of a future glory we cannot yet see.

Paul tells us that both creation (Romans 8:19–22) and we ourselves (Romans 8:23) groan with longing for this unseen glory to be revealed. Our current suffering intensifies our yearning as we wait for the day when our identity as God’s children will be visibly manifested in glory.

What makes “the sufferings of this present time” particularly challenging is the tension between our current experiences and our hidden identity as God’s children. As believers, we are already adopted into God’s family (Romans 8:14–16), but the full revealing of who we are in Christ remains unseen (Romans 8:23–25). We live in an in-between, tension-filled time where our true identity as sons of God is veiled.

“Even when God feels distant, our secure standing before him remains unchanged.”

This hiddenness, coupled with our ongoing struggles with indwelling sin (Romans 7:13–25), can make the trials we face — tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, and sword (Romans 8:35) — feel overwhelming and at odds with the truth about who we really are. The felt realities of our suffering, combined with our internal battles, constantly try to persuade us that we are less than what God has declared us to be. They work to strip away the assurance that God is truly our Father.

When God sent Moses to announce his promised deliverance, the people were too broken in spirit to listen (Exodus 6:9). Their harsh reality overshadowed their hope. What are we to do when we find ourselves in a similar place, where the promise of deliverance seems distant, and our hearts struggle to believe?

Our Durable Assurance

Paul doesn’t leave us without an answer. He frames his entire discussion of the already–not yet tension in our Christian lives with one great enduring reality.

He begins Romans 8 with our unshakable confidence: “There is . . . now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). There is no condemnation, now or ever, for those united with the one who was made to be sin, though he knew no sin, “so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). God himself has graciously given us a righteousness that forever frees us from the most horrific circumstance imaginable: the just judgment of God against us because of our sin.

As Paul concludes Romans 8, he asks, “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died — more than that, who was raised — who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us” (Romans 8:33–34). Robert Haldane writes,

Among the temptations to which the believer is exposed in this life, some are from without, others are from within. Within are the alarms of conscience, fearing the wrath of God; without are adversity and tribulations. Unless [the believer] overcomes the first, he cannot prevail against the last. It is impossible that he can possess true patience and confidence in God in his afflictions, if his conscience labours under the apprehension of the wrath of God. (Romans, 412)

Confidence in the face of adversity begins with the unshakable assurance that Christ, who died and was raised, intercedes for us. In our darkest moments, when God’s comfort seems to vanish and suffering threatens to overwhelm us, we hear again the gospel’s good news: the God who justified us in Christ will not allow any accusation to stand. Even when God feels distant, our secure standing before him remains unchanged.

Our hope rests not on fluctuating emotions or our sense of his presence but on the unshakable truth that Christ is our righteousness — our “light and high beauty” — ensuring that nothing, neither internal fears nor external trials, can separate us from the Father’s love (Romans 8:35–39).

Righteousness for Real Life

During the last three weeks of my son Daniel’s life, which he spent in the hospital, I found great help in Jerry Bridges’s The Gospel for Real Life, a book that had just been released. As I write, the same copy I read during that severe trial sits before me. One highlighted passage particularly resonated with me, both during his illness and in the dark days that followed. Bridges writes about Paul’s daily joy in God’s gift of justification, stating, “By faith he looked to Jesus Christ and His righteousness for his sense of being in right standing with God today and tomorrow, and throughout eternity” (111).

When I struggled with my sense of God’s absence, I was tempted to gauge his acceptance by how vividly I could feel him near. Yet Robert Critchley’s hymn “On Christ the Solid Rock” counsels us not to “trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus’s name.” My emotions were not the measure of God’s acceptance. What mattered was Christ’s righteousness, declared to be mine through faith alone. To paraphrase Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 1:9, my dark night of the soul taught me to rely not on my experiences, no matter how sweet they may seem at times, but on Christ, my righteousness. He alone is the deepest rest for our souls.