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I'm in the midst of writing an article for a newsletter about some of the transitions I've been going through over the past couple of years, and how I have coped with God's help. It's interesting to look back and see where I've been and how far I have come, and it's encouraging to see some of my prayers answered. But it's also a bit scary, because even though I have faith that it's going to turn out all right eventually, I still find myself asking that question -- Why? Why did it have to happen? Why did it have to work this way? Why me? And the big one, why is this taking so long? Then, once I start asking these questions, I find myself thinking of the harder questions, the doubtful questions -- Are you listening? Do you see my struggle? Do you see how my friends are struggling? Why are you not listening? And if you are listening, then what are you waiting for?
Well, I got an answer to all this, before I had barely even asked the questions. Interestingly enough, we got an email a few days ago, one of these that comes every week with articles about faith and such -- I don't always read them, but this one caught my eye today, and so I read it.
How does God do that, anyway?!?! :-D An article that was sitting in my inbox for several days unread is just what I needed to read today!
Here it is, if you are interested:
In this issue of the Communique, we deal with the ancient and oft asked question, 'Why?' At one time or another we have all wrestled with that question when faced with baffling or frightening situations. Religion will always be ready to proffer its insensitive and shallow responses. But from the life of David, Smedes offers a perspective that resonates with truth in the face of our bewilderment. He gives legitimacy to the questions that pour forth from our frustration and fear when it appears God has abandoned us.
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When God Goes on Leave of Absence
If you have lived as long as I have, you have probably found yourself, now and then, in deep trouble and you asked God to help and He did not seem to hear. You knocked at His door and nobody was home. Gone on vacation. Heaven was silent. And you began to wonder whether God had gone on leave of absence and left you alone. If it hasn't happened to you yet, stick around awhile, it just may. And when it does happen, you may find yourself asking God the most painful question that anyone who believes in Him can ever ask: Why have You gone off and left me to suffer alone? Oh God, why have You let me down?
You won't be the first person to ask God this question, not by a long shot. David, one of the most beloved writers in the entire Bible, in the very first verse of Psalm 22, asks the same question you may have felt like asking once in a while in your life: My God, my God, why, why have You abandoned me?
Mind you, he's not asking whether there is a God. He knows that God exists. But what good does it do if God exists out there somewhere in the great beyond but isn't down here when we need Him? It is precisely because we believe that He exists that it hurts so much when He is not here to help us in our time of trouble.
David believed with all his heart that God would be with him even in the most God-forsaken situations. I want you to listen to my paraphrase of his words in my favorite of all Psalms 139. Listen to this trust: "When I feel as if I am going over the edge, the bottom is falling out beneath me, I'll not be afraid because you, O God, will be there to hold me up when I fall. When I am lost in the dark and can't find my way, and I'm afraid I'm going to stumble and break my neck, you, O God, will take my hand and lead me through. Even when life is hell on earth, I trust you. I trust you to be there. I trust you to be there with me, and you will not let me down." Now that is trust.
But it's always hardest when you trust someone to be there for you and it feels as if he's really let you down. This is why we find David calling to a silent heaven and demanding to know: Why have you deserted me in my time of trouble? David trusted God, and He wasn't there.
I have asked the same question more than once. Maybe you have, too. And if you haven't put it into words, you have felt it deep in your spirit. So I want to talk to you about that question, the question to an absentee God, a God who has gone on leave of absence. There are five things that have struck me about that awful question that he asks, and I invite you to think about each one of them with me.
First of all, it was a real question.
I used to tell my students that there was no such thing as a stupid question. Any question is a good question as long as it is a real question. Sometimes people ask questions to show off that they are smart enough to ask such brilliant questions. Those are phony questions. Or they ask tricky questions just to embarrass somebody, a phony question. These are not real questions. You ask a real question when you honestly don't know the answer and you want badly to know it.
David simply didn't know why God had let him down. And his whole being cried out for an answer. So he went straight to God, face to face, eyeball to eyeball, and asked Him, "Why have you let me down?"
It is okay to question God, as long as it is a real question, and God honors honest questions. So if you wonder why God has let you down, the Bible says: Go ahead and ask.
Have you ever noticed that the last words Jesus spoke before he died were a question? In fact it was the very same question that David asked God: Why have you let me down? He, too, asked it because He did not know and He wanted an answer. So, as long as your question is real, go right to the source and ask for an answer.
The second thing I've noticed about David's question is this: it is a question that came from the heart.
It didn't originate from his left brain. It exploded from his heart. I can tell you that when your life feels as if it is falling apart and you are dangling in the cutting winds of pain and God doesn't lift a finger to help, you don't ask academic questions. Your question is a child's cry from the bottom of the heart.
It is like the cry of a little child whose mommy and daddy have gone away and she fears they won't come back. Last year my son, Charley, and his family moved from California, where we live, to Michigan, where we used to live. As you can imagine, they talked about it a lot at home before the time came for them to pack up and go. Their four-year old daughter, our lovely Emily, listened and wondered and worried about what she heard. One evening, Charley and his beautiful wife, Kim, went out to visit friends and left Emily with a babysitter. Emily went to bed, fell into a deep sleep, then had a bad dream and woke up crying for her mother. But mommy and daddy had not come home yet. So Emily wailed, "Mummy and Daddy have gone to Michigan and left me alone!"
David's question to God was just like little Emily's cry: God has gone to Michigan and left me dangling here alone. That's a cry of the heart. Where is God and why has He gone away and left me alone?
Whenever a hurting heart cries out Why?, it is a cry that God respects because it deserves to be heard.
The third thing that impresses me about David's question is this: it was a protest.
Let's face it. This question implied a protest to God. David felt he had a right to expect God to keep His promises, to stay on the job, doing the sorts of things a good God is supposed to do. And when He is not there, he filed a protest.
Not long ago a bright and beautiful young woman I knew died at the young age of twenty-two. She had just graduated cum laude from Princeton University and stood on the launching pad for her private crusade to make the world a better place for women. Then she got Hodgkin's disease, and she died. At her funeral the minister began his sermon this way. He said: "Dear friends, we have gathered here in the house of God to protest the death of Suzanne."
Some people thought it was not the right way for a preacher to talk at a funeral. I thought it was just right. Twenty-two year old women are not supposed to die. And if you believe in God and trust Him to keep His promises, you feel like filing a protest when they do. God should have been there, one feels, and done something to keep it from happening.
No doubt about it, when David asked God why He was not there when He was needed, he was saying, "This is not the way I expect God to act, and this is not the way it's supposed to be, and I protest."
The fourth thing that I've noticed about the question that David put to God is this: it takes a heap of faith to ask it.
Some people I know think that any person who questions God might be losing her faith. They are so wrong. Only somebody who trusts God to be there with her gets this hurt when God doesn't show up. Only a person of faith dares to look God straight in the eye and ask, "Where are you when I need you?"
Consider this: Only a child who trusts her father to be there for her when she needs him complains to him when he is not around to help. Only a person who trusts God dares to complain to God. Only a person with a lot of faith dares to put it straight to the Maker of the universe.
And now the fifth and last thing that has struck me profoundly about David's question. It's this. It's the kind of question that can be answered only in experience.
It is the kind of question that needs an answer all right. But the only good answer comes, not in words, but in action; not in theory, but in experience.
Let me share with you the pit, the bedrock of my faith on these matters, about where God is. This is how I see it. Long ago, when the best and brightest of all the ages was at the end of His rope and it felt as if God had abandoned Him, He asked the same question David asked in his time of trouble: Why? Why? And He got no answer, not in words. Heaven was silent again. No answer. Dead silence. He died without an answer from God.
But then, just three days later, before the fingers of the light had filtered through the mist of the morning, before the citizens of the city had finished their second snooze, the Almighty got into the grave where Jesus' body lay. And the power of His creative spirit began to move inside that dead corpse. Life began to pulsate again through its dead nerves and flow like energy through its arteries like a rush of warm power. And Jesus came alive.
Jesus asked the most painful question anybody can ever ask of God, and the answer came, not with words, but with an action; not in theory, but in life. In resurrection.
So this is what I want to say to you. If you feel God has gone away on vacation and left you on your own, go straight to Him. Ask a question. Raise a protest. Ask him why He is letting you down. And then you'll have to do the hardest thing of all. Wait. Wait for Him to come back the way Jesus did. Wait for Him to come back and give you your own resurrection.
I know that waiting is the hardest job in the world. It is ten thousand times harder to wait than it is to rush into action. But when it feels as if God's gone, gone on leave of absence, and you ask Him why, you may have to wait for Him to come back. I want to tell you that the secret of waiting is hope. Wait with hope. Wait with hope! For He will come back. He will come back! Keep on waiting. Keep on hoping. He'll come back. He always has. And He will come back to you.
Well, I got an answer to all this, before I had barely even asked the questions. Interestingly enough, we got an email a few days ago, one of these that comes every week with articles about faith and such -- I don't always read them, but this one caught my eye today, and so I read it.
How does God do that, anyway?!?! :-D An article that was sitting in my inbox for several days unread is just what I needed to read today!
Here it is, if you are interested:
In this issue of the Communique, we deal with the ancient and oft asked question, 'Why?' At one time or another we have all wrestled with that question when faced with baffling or frightening situations. Religion will always be ready to proffer its insensitive and shallow responses. But from the life of David, Smedes offers a perspective that resonates with truth in the face of our bewilderment. He gives legitimacy to the questions that pour forth from our frustration and fear when it appears God has abandoned us.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
When God Goes on Leave of Absence
If you have lived as long as I have, you have probably found yourself, now and then, in deep trouble and you asked God to help and He did not seem to hear. You knocked at His door and nobody was home. Gone on vacation. Heaven was silent. And you began to wonder whether God had gone on leave of absence and left you alone. If it hasn't happened to you yet, stick around awhile, it just may. And when it does happen, you may find yourself asking God the most painful question that anyone who believes in Him can ever ask: Why have You gone off and left me to suffer alone? Oh God, why have You let me down?
You won't be the first person to ask God this question, not by a long shot. David, one of the most beloved writers in the entire Bible, in the very first verse of Psalm 22, asks the same question you may have felt like asking once in a while in your life: My God, my God, why, why have You abandoned me?
Mind you, he's not asking whether there is a God. He knows that God exists. But what good does it do if God exists out there somewhere in the great beyond but isn't down here when we need Him? It is precisely because we believe that He exists that it hurts so much when He is not here to help us in our time of trouble.
David believed with all his heart that God would be with him even in the most God-forsaken situations. I want you to listen to my paraphrase of his words in my favorite of all Psalms 139. Listen to this trust: "When I feel as if I am going over the edge, the bottom is falling out beneath me, I'll not be afraid because you, O God, will be there to hold me up when I fall. When I am lost in the dark and can't find my way, and I'm afraid I'm going to stumble and break my neck, you, O God, will take my hand and lead me through. Even when life is hell on earth, I trust you. I trust you to be there. I trust you to be there with me, and you will not let me down." Now that is trust.
But it's always hardest when you trust someone to be there for you and it feels as if he's really let you down. This is why we find David calling to a silent heaven and demanding to know: Why have you deserted me in my time of trouble? David trusted God, and He wasn't there.
I have asked the same question more than once. Maybe you have, too. And if you haven't put it into words, you have felt it deep in your spirit. So I want to talk to you about that question, the question to an absentee God, a God who has gone on leave of absence. There are five things that have struck me about that awful question that he asks, and I invite you to think about each one of them with me.
First of all, it was a real question.
I used to tell my students that there was no such thing as a stupid question. Any question is a good question as long as it is a real question. Sometimes people ask questions to show off that they are smart enough to ask such brilliant questions. Those are phony questions. Or they ask tricky questions just to embarrass somebody, a phony question. These are not real questions. You ask a real question when you honestly don't know the answer and you want badly to know it.
David simply didn't know why God had let him down. And his whole being cried out for an answer. So he went straight to God, face to face, eyeball to eyeball, and asked Him, "Why have you let me down?"
It is okay to question God, as long as it is a real question, and God honors honest questions. So if you wonder why God has let you down, the Bible says: Go ahead and ask.
Have you ever noticed that the last words Jesus spoke before he died were a question? In fact it was the very same question that David asked God: Why have you let me down? He, too, asked it because He did not know and He wanted an answer. So, as long as your question is real, go right to the source and ask for an answer.
The second thing I've noticed about David's question is this: it is a question that came from the heart.
It didn't originate from his left brain. It exploded from his heart. I can tell you that when your life feels as if it is falling apart and you are dangling in the cutting winds of pain and God doesn't lift a finger to help, you don't ask academic questions. Your question is a child's cry from the bottom of the heart.
It is like the cry of a little child whose mommy and daddy have gone away and she fears they won't come back. Last year my son, Charley, and his family moved from California, where we live, to Michigan, where we used to live. As you can imagine, they talked about it a lot at home before the time came for them to pack up and go. Their four-year old daughter, our lovely Emily, listened and wondered and worried about what she heard. One evening, Charley and his beautiful wife, Kim, went out to visit friends and left Emily with a babysitter. Emily went to bed, fell into a deep sleep, then had a bad dream and woke up crying for her mother. But mommy and daddy had not come home yet. So Emily wailed, "Mummy and Daddy have gone to Michigan and left me alone!"
David's question to God was just like little Emily's cry: God has gone to Michigan and left me dangling here alone. That's a cry of the heart. Where is God and why has He gone away and left me alone?
Whenever a hurting heart cries out Why?, it is a cry that God respects because it deserves to be heard.
The third thing that impresses me about David's question is this: it was a protest.
Let's face it. This question implied a protest to God. David felt he had a right to expect God to keep His promises, to stay on the job, doing the sorts of things a good God is supposed to do. And when He is not there, he filed a protest.
Not long ago a bright and beautiful young woman I knew died at the young age of twenty-two. She had just graduated cum laude from Princeton University and stood on the launching pad for her private crusade to make the world a better place for women. Then she got Hodgkin's disease, and she died. At her funeral the minister began his sermon this way. He said: "Dear friends, we have gathered here in the house of God to protest the death of Suzanne."
Some people thought it was not the right way for a preacher to talk at a funeral. I thought it was just right. Twenty-two year old women are not supposed to die. And if you believe in God and trust Him to keep His promises, you feel like filing a protest when they do. God should have been there, one feels, and done something to keep it from happening.
No doubt about it, when David asked God why He was not there when He was needed, he was saying, "This is not the way I expect God to act, and this is not the way it's supposed to be, and I protest."
The fourth thing that I've noticed about the question that David put to God is this: it takes a heap of faith to ask it.
Some people I know think that any person who questions God might be losing her faith. They are so wrong. Only somebody who trusts God to be there with her gets this hurt when God doesn't show up. Only a person of faith dares to look God straight in the eye and ask, "Where are you when I need you?"
Consider this: Only a child who trusts her father to be there for her when she needs him complains to him when he is not around to help. Only a person who trusts God dares to complain to God. Only a person with a lot of faith dares to put it straight to the Maker of the universe.
And now the fifth and last thing that has struck me profoundly about David's question. It's this. It's the kind of question that can be answered only in experience.
It is the kind of question that needs an answer all right. But the only good answer comes, not in words, but in action; not in theory, but in experience.
Let me share with you the pit, the bedrock of my faith on these matters, about where God is. This is how I see it. Long ago, when the best and brightest of all the ages was at the end of His rope and it felt as if God had abandoned Him, He asked the same question David asked in his time of trouble: Why? Why? And He got no answer, not in words. Heaven was silent again. No answer. Dead silence. He died without an answer from God.
But then, just three days later, before the fingers of the light had filtered through the mist of the morning, before the citizens of the city had finished their second snooze, the Almighty got into the grave where Jesus' body lay. And the power of His creative spirit began to move inside that dead corpse. Life began to pulsate again through its dead nerves and flow like energy through its arteries like a rush of warm power. And Jesus came alive.
Jesus asked the most painful question anybody can ever ask of God, and the answer came, not with words, but with an action; not in theory, but in life. In resurrection.
So this is what I want to say to you. If you feel God has gone away on vacation and left you on your own, go straight to Him. Ask a question. Raise a protest. Ask him why He is letting you down. And then you'll have to do the hardest thing of all. Wait. Wait for Him to come back the way Jesus did. Wait for Him to come back and give you your own resurrection.
I know that waiting is the hardest job in the world. It is ten thousand times harder to wait than it is to rush into action. But when it feels as if God's gone, gone on leave of absence, and you ask Him why, you may have to wait for Him to come back. I want to tell you that the secret of waiting is hope. Wait with hope. Wait with hope! For He will come back. He will come back! Keep on waiting. Keep on hoping. He'll come back. He always has. And He will come back to you.
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