Heart Tracks - Trusting Him With The "Why?"

     Answers.  We want them.  Lots of them.  Particularly the ones that begin with "Why?"  This starts at a very young age and the desire to ask it never goes away.  We want to know why, and we especially want to know when it comes to the hard questions of life and just where God is in all of it.  The thing of it is, God so often doesn't seem at all inclined to give us the answers we want.  In fact, our why's can quickly go from being questions to being accusations.  In our "why's" we can accuse God of being uncaring, unloving, and unaware.

Some of the why's of the disciples to Jesus were of this sort.  I believe many of ours are as well.  

    Jennifer Rothschild, blind since age 15 says that so much of our problem comes from our insistence on defining what is "good" rather than accepting what the Father calls good.  The gap between the two can be very wide, indeed impossible for our fleshly minds to reconcile.  If God is good, then why did my marriage fail, my child die, this disease come upon me?  Rothschild says we ask, why cancer, why heartbreaking pain, why irreplaceable loss?  In her why's she heard His Spirit whisper to hers, "Why grace, why peace, why forgiveness? Why love?"  We never feel we deserve the awful afflictions that visit us, and in most cases, I believe that is so, yet, do any of us "deserve" His grace, His forgiveness, His joy, His peace?  Really, who are we, as David asked, that He should take notice of us, and more, love us.  The old hymn, "Such love, such wondrous love."  We can never do anything to deserve the wondrous love He has bestowed upon us in Christ.  We may agree with this, yet still, the question lingers in our pain, why?  This may be so especially in those place where we see the Father give to someone else, the very thing, answer, that we've been seeking for ourselves.  "Why, Lord?  Why them and not me?"  We may ask with or without bitter anger and tears, but yet we ask.  We may remember where, in the gospels, the disciples asked Jesus why a man had been born blind.  Jesus replied that it was so the glory of God could be displayed in Him.  In that story the man was healed.  It's much easier to see His glory in a healing....if we only see with eyes of flesh.  I am beginning to understand that we may behold His glory more in what He doesn't do than what He does.  It's in such places that we may truly come to know the wonder and glory of His grace and presence.
    We seek clear answers, but far more than answers, we need the AnswerGiver, whose answer is so often Himself.  Rothschild says that she is learning in her life, with all the questions, pain, and need, that she can trust Him with her "why's?"  When we reach such a place of trust in Him, we no longer demand He explain Himself, we just receive and live in the fullness of Himself.  Then we too can trust Him with our "Why's?"

Blessings,

Pastor O
   
    

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