This is the oldest and strongest objection to belief in a good and powerful God, and it deserves better than a quick reply. Anyone who offers a tidy solution has either not suffered or is not listening.

The problem stated fairly

If God is entirely good he would want to end suffering. If he is entirely powerful he could. Suffering continues. Something in that set appears to give way.

Note that the argument only bites because Christianity claims God is good. A distant or indifferent deity raises no such problem. The difficulty is the price of a high claim.

What Christians say, and how far it gets

Some suffering follows from human freedom being real. A world in which cruelty is impossible is a world in which love is also impossible, because both require that our choices actually do something. This accounts for a great deal — war, exploitation, neglect — and it does not account for the earthquake.

Some suffering forms character in ways comfort cannot. This is true, and observably so, and it is not adequate as an explanation for a child dying of hunger. Saying it to a bereaved parent is worse than saying nothing.

Some accounts point to a creation itself disordered, awaiting renewal, so that natural evil is not the world working as designed. This is coherent and it is not a proof.

Honest Christian thinking has never claimed to close this question. It claims something else.

What Christianity claims instead

Not an explanation but a presence. The central Christian assertion is that God did not stay outside the problem. He entered it: born poor, a refugee in childhood, betrayed by a friend, tortured by an occupying power, and executed. The cry from the cross asking why God had abandoned him is in the Bible, unanswered on the page.

Whatever else that is, it is not a God who has never been here. And the resurrection is presented as the beginning of the reversal rather than its completion, which is why Christians expect suffering now and refuse to accept it as final.

What this means practically

You are allowed to be angry, and to say so directly. A third of the Psalms complain, and several accuse God to his face. That material is in Scripture because it belongs there.

You are not required to find a reason before you are allowed to hope. And the response the New Testament asks of believers who are not currently suffering is not explanation but presence: to show up, and to stay.

If you are in it now, ask people to pray for you specifically — our prayer wall is open — and let a local congregation know, because being visited beats being explained to. The directory is where to start.