You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast for Catholic kids that strives to plant seeds of faith.

Hey there, Sprouts.

Today is September 10th, 2018.

This week on the Catholic Sprouts podcast,

we are going to be talking about something perhaps a little uncomfortable.

We are going to be talking about suffering.

Now, chances are, no matter how old you are, there has been a little bit of suffering in your life. Maybe a loved one died and you

grieved for them. Maybe you suffered an injury and you felt the physical suffering that went along with it.

Maybe at one point you felt left out and you felt the suffering of loneliness.

All of these things are genuine suffering.

And one of the hardest things for us to understand as human beings is why we must

suffer. Even adult Christians who have studied their faith still wrestle with the concept of why

bad things happen. Why does God allow for bad things to happen? Why does God allow for horrible

storms to destroy cities or for evil men to come to power and kill thousands of people? Why do these

things even happen? Well, this is actually a very good question,

and I want to warn you before we dive into it, that even though we have studied and thought about it,

we still don't really know the entire answer to this question. We do know that God is love, that God's very

being is love, and that he is all powerful. We know that he can do anything. But the problem is

that knowing that God is love, that he loves us, and that he can do anything, so that he can do anything. But the problem is that knowing that God is love, that he loves us and that he

can do anything, sometimes makes it even more frustrating that he allows bad things to happen.

One reason why bad things happen in this world has to do with the way that God created us. God gave us free will when

he created us. Having free will means that we get to choose. We not only get to choose somewhat

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