Scripture refuses to give suffering one cause, and that refusal is load-bearing. It distinguishes at least three sources: a creation "subjected to futility" and groaning — a broken world where towers fall and cells mutate without moral verdict on the victims (Romans 8:20–22; Luke 13:1–5); an enemy whose malice is real (Job 1–2; Luke 13:16); and, distinctly, a Father's discipline of those he loves, which is formative, not punitive (Hebrews 12:5–11). The friends of Job collapsed these into one tidy formula — suffering equals punishment — and God's own verdict on that theology is scorching: "you have not spoken of me what is right" (Job 42:7). Jesus issues the same refusal twice in one breath about a massacre and a fallen tower (Luke 13:1–5), and again about a man born blind (John 9:3).
What Scripture gives instead of a formula is a person. Job's ache — "there is no arbiter between us, who might lay his hand on us both" (Job 9:33) — is answered: "there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5), who did not explain suffering from a distance but entered it, wept at a grave he was about to empty (John 11:35), and carried the worst of it in his own body. And the story ends with the end of the thing itself: "he will wipe away every tear... death shall be no more" (Revelation 21:4). Between here and there, the honest questions — the Psalms are full of them — are themselves a form of faith. Lament is prayer, not failure. And this briefing is only a map of what the texts say: read Job 42, Luke 13, and Romans 8 yourself, and weigh it against them.
Job 42:7 — God condemns the tidy explanation
Luke 13:1–5 — Jesus severs tragedy from verdict
John 9:1–3 — "neither this man nor his parents sinned"
Romans 8:18–25 — creation groaning, hope in labor pains
Job 9:33 with 1 Timothy 2:5 — the go-between asked for, and given
Revelation 21:1–4 — where the story actually ends
Don't take this briefing's word for it — read these and test it.
The Reformed tradition emphasizes God's meticulous providence — no suffering is outside his governance or ultimately without purpose. Wesleyan-Arminians emphasize the space real freedom creates: much evil is the cost of creatures able to love or refuse. Catholic teaching adds that suffering united with Christ can be made redemptive in the sufferer's own life. The Orthodox East treats suffering less as a puzzle to solve than an arena where God works healing and growth. All four agree on what Job's friends got wrong.
No one — including this service — may tell you why your particular loss happened. Assigning causes to another person's suffering is the one move these texts explicitly condemn. And while believers follow Christ's pattern in suffering (1 Peter 2:21), no one's pain pays for sin — his did that, once, entirely.
If you're carrying a real loss right now, a card is not what you need — a congregation, a pastor, people who will sit with you: that's where this answer lives.