“We are all under the Mercy, and Christ knows the precise weight and proportion of our sufferings — he bore them. He carried our sorrows. He suffered, not that we might not suffer, but that our sufferings might be like his,” wrote the 19th century Scottish author George MacDonald.

I came across this quote in an article on loss by the late missionary and author Elisabeth Elliot. If anyone had reason to doubt God when life hurt, it was Elisabeth, whose 29-year-old husband Jim Eliot was murdered along with four other missionaries by the Huaorani people of Ecuador. Instead of turning her back on God, Elizabeth — with her 10- month-old daughter — famously chose to live among her husband’s killers and show them God’s love, a story told in the movie The End of the Spear.

In Jim’s life, I find the life of Christ — the one who came to teach and heal and serve and who was killed by those he came to save. And in Elizabeth’s story I find the story of God — who forgives and shows mercy.

When life hurts, I am tempted to compare my injuries and griefs to others. Like a child pulling up shirt sleeves and pant legs, I want to judge whose scraped heart and broken identity is more wounded. Or, when life seemingly leaves someone unscathed, I wonder why has she had it so easy? Why is his life so good? Such comparisons can never get beneath the skin to reveal the aches and sorrows beneath.

More helpful, I have discovered, is to look closely at the life of Christ, whom scripture says was without sin. If anyone deserved an easy and good life, it was him. Instead, he was rejected, impoverished, without a home, mocked, misunderstood, chased by an angry crowd, abandoned by his closest companions, betrayed, put on trial, stripped of his clothing, whipped and crucified between two thieves.

Yet in that darkest, loneliest moment of piercing pain, we are told that “Jesus knew that his mission was now finished,” John 19:28. In other words, because Christ knew his purpose — to offer mercy to those who would one day follow him — he was able to trust God in unimaginable suffering.

To trust in suffering, we must take our eyes off the easy. We must seek our purpose in reaching out in sacrificial love to others. We must look to Christ as our example. In times of sorrow, I have found great comfort in the words of Peter.

“In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials,” I Peter 1:6 says. “These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith — of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire — may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”

Our suffering, our hurts, our pain are not without purpose when we choose to trust. If we look not to others, but to Christ, they are gold. And you and me and Elisabeth Eliot? We are under the Mercy.

MEADOW RUE MERRILL is a Mid-coast Maine writer who shares about God in her everyday life through “Faith Notes.” For more, go to www.meadowrue.com where you can follow her on Twitter or Facebook.