Life sucks sometimes.
There’s no other way to put it, really, and the fact that God doesn’t step in and solve our problems the way we think He should… well, that just makes everything worse.
Because we know He could, if He decided to.
And sure, there’s all this mess about free will and choices and consequences and a fallen world and so we have sickness, pain, disease, death, and just general stupidity. But still. Doesn’t the Bible make all these promises about the Lord being our healer, about the curse having lost its power? Yes, well, it does.
So, then, what do you do when
- God doesn’t keep you from having another miscarriage or
- God doesn’t let you get pregnant right away or
- God lets you get pregnant when you weren’t planning on it or
- God doesn’t find a job for your husband or
- God doesn’t make your business prosper for month after long, weary month or
- God doesn’t stop that horrible cross-country move away from your family or
- God doesn’t send the perfect man to your doorstep and you’re almost 30 or
- God doesn’t heal your mom’s cancer and you watch her die or
- God doesn’t stop your friend’s divorce and you watch her suffer or
- God doesn’t keep your grown children from pain and you suffer with them or
- God doesn’t keep your young children from hurt, or disease, or disability and you can’t heal them…
What then?
I have heard so many sermons about this and still the basic question – the why – is unanswered. Is there a greater purpose in the suffering? Do we become better people for it? Do we grow? Does someone else benefit, somehow? Is it all for God’s greater glory, somehow?
Well, maybe yes to all those questions. But we can’t see the how and the why. We are in pain, and we don’t fathom how our pain could be a benefit, a blessing, a glory. It just feels like plain old senseless stupid pain,
pain that God could stop if He chose to.
And doesn’t it seem kind of, I don’t know, selfish of God that He would let us go through all this pain just so He could have a little more glory? How much more glory does He need?
My profound answer is that I don’t have a profound answer, or, really, an answer at all.
Since my Mom died, I’ve thought of many reasons – most petty, many implausible – why it might have been better for her to die. No matter how many reasons I come up with, however, none even remotely justify her death. None seem even close to worth it.
Yeah, I know. Perspective. She was my Mom; I’m really going to think her death was worth some random, remote reason? Nah. If it came down to saving 1 person I loved or 100 people I didn’t know, I’d probably go for the person I loved. Selfish, but I’m being honest.
So, if I were God, I would save my Mom no matter how many really profound and non-petty reasons there were to let her die.
And that’s what it comes down to, really;
it isn’t that we can’t comprehend that there might be a justifiable reason for God to let pain enter and even remain in our lives. It’s that because we are the ones experiencing the pain, we would never choose it, no matter how good the reason.
That’s why God doesn’t give us the choice.
And that’s what we need to remember when we feel like we can’t trust God.
Is it really that we can’t trust Him to do what’s best, what’s right, to know what best and right is?
Or is it that we can’t trust Him to be selfish on our behalf? Because – you know what? – we can’t. You can’t trust God to be selfish for you, or to put your interest above anyone else’s. He won’t do that. And I think we all know, ultimately, that’s a good thing.
Image: even the leaves can be lonely sometimes. by lethaargic