Rabbi Kushner wrote a love letter to the world.

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Rabbi Harold Kushner gave us the answer.

Bad things still happen to good people, which kept his book selling into the millions, which troubled him. He hated that there was always a fresh supply of grief, that so many suffered great losses.

He had the heart of a rabbi his entire life. He died April 28 at the age 88.

Kushner wrote the bestselling book, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” in 1981. It sold more than 4 million copies and was translated into a dozen languages.

The death of his son inspired the title. His deep Jewish faith provided the answers. Kushner lost his only son, Aaron, to a rare, incurable, genetic condition called progeria, which rapidly ages a person.

Just hours after his daughter was born, Kushner’s son, who was 3, was diagnosed with the fatal condition. Joy and sorrow. How to reconcile them both?

Losing a child made him confront: Where was God? In answering that question for himself, he gave us all great comfort.

His belief?

God gave us free will and created a world where natural disasters happen because there are laws of nature that simply unfold that can create wildfires, tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, diseases, etc., that might hurt human beings.

God doesn’t just give good people every good thing they want because bad people have free will, too. Or perhaps we’re all good people until we use our self-will to harm others.

Kushner didn’t blame God for giving his son a rare fatal condition. He focused on being grateful God gave him the strength to love and care for his son.

What grief he faced along the way. He watched his son shrink into old age instead of growing into life. When Aaron was 10, his body was like someone 60. When Aaron died days after he turned 14, he weighed 25 pounds and looked like a wrinkled old man.

But what a life Aaron lived. He inspired a book that would help millions cope with suffering and grief. His dad went on to write 14 books.

Kushner wrote, “God would like people to get what they deserve in life, but He cannot always arrange it. Forced to choose between a good God who is not totally powerful, or a powerful God who is not totally good, the author of the “Book of Job” chooses to believe in God’s goodness.”

Bottom line?

God’s love is unlimited; God’s power isn’t. God’s power is limited because he used His power to give us each the gift of self will and also used it to create an amazing world with rules of order, laws of nature, that not even God can stop. We live in a world that will challenge us to be the best of us for ourselves and for others.

God doesn’t will tragedy but also doesn’t stop those things from happening. He gives us the grace to handle them and created an endless supply of people and support in this great world to help us.

God gave us each other.

Kushner not only gave us permission to question our beliefs about God, he called it our duty. His writing harnessed answers to our own deepest questions.

One of the most beautiful things he wrote was a farewell letter to life at the end of his book, “Nine Essential Things I’ve Learned About Life.”

He called it, “A Love Letter to A World that May or May Not Deserve It.”

Dear World, We’ve been through a lot together over the past eight decades, you and I – marriages, births, deaths, fulfillment and disappointment, war and peace, good times and hard times. There were days when you were more generous to me than I could possibly have deserved. And there were days when you cheated me out of things I felt I was entitled to. There were days when you looked so achingly beautiful that I could hardly believe you were mine, and days when you broke my heart and reduced me to tears.

But with it all, I choose to love you. I love you, whether you deserve it or not (and how does one measure that?). I love you in part because you are the only world I have. I love you because I like who I am better when I do.

But mostly, I love you because loving you makes it easier for me to be grateful for today and hopeful about tomorrow. Love does that.

Faithfully yours, Harold Kushner

Faithful. All the way to the end.