There is so much suffering in the world and it is getting harder to carry. How do people hold on to a good God with all of this in front of them?

“O LORD, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear! even cry out unto thee of violence, and thou wilt not save! Why dost thou shew me iniquity, and cause me to behold grievance? for spoiling and violence are before me: and there are that raise up strife and contention.”

Habakkuk opens his book with a complaint rather than a sermon. He asks how long he must cry out, and why God makes him look at violence and grievance day after day. God does not rebuke him for asking. The whole book is structured as an argument the prophet is permitted to have, and it was preserved in scripture with his complaint left fully in.

“For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”

Paul describes the whole creation groaning together in pain, and says believers groan right along with it. He is not describing a world that is basically fine apart from local problems. He is describing something in labor, which is honest about the pain and also about the fact that it is going somewhere. Both halves matter, and the groaning half comes first.