C.S. Lewis speaks to this directly in Mere Christianity when he says that our moral principles need to come from somewhere. To believe in God means, to some degree, to believe in magic. I see nothing wrong with that, even in an age of science.
Speaking of science, that is where all suffering begins and ends. My view of God is that he doesn't instruct the universe to make us suffer, or not.
When biology, science, fails us, we want to shake our fist at God and anyone else around us. Science was one of the languages God created, like music. Music helps our soul rest, but science makes it possible for humans to understand our fate.
If water sometimes boiled at 50 degrees fahrenheit, humans would still be apelike creatures, even if sentient, because it would have beenn impossible to progress with unpredictability regarding how nature works.
I hope you'll be able to keep your faith during these difficult times, and keep in mind that God doesn't pick and choose among us who will face the misfortune of a raging storm of mutated cells. That's science. He (she? they? — God is genderless) doesn't take any joy in our suffering. He built the universe and based it on science, which was itself an act of love, but science speaks danger.
I happen to believe, without any proof, that even miracles are based on science. That when people pray and recover, they've somehow tapped into a part of the universe that connects us all and makes us more powerful than we can know.
When such prayer fails, it is not because we are less deserving than someone else. It is simply that our connections failed to matererialize through a science that we don't understand very well.
Recently, the James Webb telescope revealed galaxies like ours on the edge of the universe that give lie to the Big Bang theory, which proves just how poorly we understand the science around us.
This flicker of time we are currently in will pass into something greater, and, it being a part of science, too, a quantum science we cannot yet understand, I am going to believe that your wife has already found peace, and will return to you and your kids safe and sound in this world. I will pray for that, and I hope others do, too.
