Faith during suffering is hard. Too many times I have suffered or watched others suffer and then, like an avalanche, questions pour in trying to make sense of it all. For example, I see something happen to my wife, if she is treated unfairly, or someone is rude to her, and I totally flip my lid, promise retribution on those involved… and their kin. 🙂 If you don’t see stuff in your personal life just look outside and see how much suffering is around us. No, I am not talking about 1st world stuff like, “There isn’t a Starbucks near my home.” No, I am talking about those who are afraid, those who are sick, those who will not be with us next week…
What do you say?
I fall, sometimes literally on my knees, and ask God for help. I don’t try to figure out a way to balance the books.
Not my books, not my bank.
I just have a small savings account with the lienholder, who cleared my debt. But I fall and ask God for help. I ask God to heal, I ask God for His will… and for strength to hold on when the train of life takes an unexpected, painful path.
This trust thing is hard. This faith thing is difficult, and when we put them together, it means our strength and faith must come from someplace else other than ourselves. It’s easy to trust a chair is going to hold you when you sit down. It’s difficult to trust when a loved one is hurting or you are hurting.
Everything has a season… everything.
I don’t think keeping things the same is the goal. If you’ve lived a number of years you already know… things NEVER stay the same. Life is ALWAYS changing and you either adapt or get rigid and stagnate.
As I age there are SO many stories of the Bible that come back and sit crossed-legged in front of me, pull out its peace pipe, puffing and camping on my soul to see if I will participate and inhale its truths, or run.
John the Baptist, in prison, asking if Jesus was the messiah or should we look someplace else?
David the Psalmist, in one fix after the other, is being chased by his enemies and his own demons. Peter’s proclamation to never leave Christ and within just a few hours he says what? “I don’t know that man.”
When will I, when will we admit…
Our moving, changing through this life, with all of its ups and downs, can only be measured and balanced with the Eternal. Life just doesn’t make sense sometimes, and instead of ‘feeling’ and ‘thinking’ we are weak and foolish because the world doesn’t get it, maybe we should just say, “I don’t know, but I believe.”
Like my old testament boys Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego…
Daniel 3:
- 16 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter.
- 17 If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.
- 18 But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.
I would say it’s okay. It’s okay not to have the answer, but continue to believe God has a good, defined purpose and in the end, all will work out.
