A Part of Me has Died

We ask a lot of questions, we humans. This gift of speech and language can sometimes seem like a curse. We transitioned seamlessly at the age of two from sweet innocent babies to obnoxious toddlers – if you ask me that’s why it is called the terrible twos. The unending quest for answers to everything rages on like a California forest fire.

Why? Why? The annoying, nagging questions that can drive you up the wall as a parent, surely irks God. Instead we should be asking, How? As in, how can this set of circumstances work out for my good?  Or What?  As in, what can I do now? Why is the proverbial split milk, the water under the bridge, the shattered glass on the kitchen floor. As humans, we desperately want our scars understood. MercyMe‘s song, The Hurt and the Healer, reminds us that “Healing doesn’t come from the explained.”

Nobody asks why something good happens, when it does. Like Julie Andrews in the classic movie, The Sound of Music, we are quick to assume that the grand old universe is paying us back because we “must have done something good.” I’d like to know how the nineteen year old boy in Chino Hills, CA who bought ONE lottery ticket deserves the huge chunk of the recent $1.5 billion dollars jackpot. King Solomon, the wisest and richest man who ever lived said, “The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.”*

There’s little gain in wallowing in pain, till tears carve a permanent groove on our faces. There’s only One who’s there during the dark nights of the soul, who comforts us during the winters of the heart. If we believe He is with us, we will not ask dead-end questions. God never promised that we would never NOT feel His presence – but that He will never leave nor forsake us. For sure He is real, His promise is sure even when we’re deep in a spiritual gloom. When He feels distant, we are simply being weaned of our emotional dependencies.

What makes a difference is reminding ourselves of His promises because they have not changed and neither has God, not one iota. This is maturity – the ability to discern the difference between God’s omnipresence and the manifestation of that presence in the midst of suffering. My new prayer has become, “Lord, find Your glory even here.” That whiny toddler in me has died.

Image Credit – PixCove . *Eccl.9:11