Why?
Why?
I’m glad I’m not an Old Testament saint. I don’t think I could wait as long as many of them did to get answers to their pain-filled questions.
Take Gideon, for example.
One day as he went about his work hidden in a winepress, the angel of the Lord appeared to him and called out, “The LORD is with you, mighty warrior.” Gideon looked around at his surroundings, and what he saw didn’t match the angel’s greeting. If I’m such a mighty warrior, he must have thought, then why am I secretly threshing wheat in the middle of a winepress?” The angelic statement deserved a pointed question, and Gideon asked it:
If the LORD is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our fathers told us about when they said, “Did not the LORD bring us up out of Egypt?” But now the LORD has abandoned us and put us into the hand of Midian.
Well, the Lord hadn’t abandoned them, and the story turns out happily; but Gideon never did get his questions answered.
Or take another example. Immediately after praising God’s great acts of redemption and proclaiming his undying confidence in God’s care, the writer of Psalm 44 says:
But now you have rejected and humbled us; you no longer go out with our armies. You made us retreat before the enemy, and our adversaries have plundered us … You sold your people for a pittance, gaining nothing from their sale … All this happened to us, though we had not forgotten you or been false to your covenant. Our hearts had not turned back; our feet had not strayed from your path. But you crushed us and made us a haunt for jackals and covered us over with deep darkness … Yet for your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered (vv. 9-10,12,17-19, 22).
And then comes his question:
Why do you hide your face and forget our misery and oppression? (v. 24).
A hard question. A painful question. A question God never answers … until you get to the New Testament.
“Why do you hide your face and forget our misery and oppression?”—have you ever felt like that? Has it ever seemed that God has abandoned you even though you’ve remained faithful to Him? Has unexpected pain or calamity or sickness or tragedy or misfortune come storming into your life, leaving you bleeding and mumbling, “Why?”
I’ve been there, too, friend. So has Gideon. So has the writer of Psalm 44. But what those men didn’t have, and we do, is found snuggled up in Paul’s amazing promise in Romans 8. That’s where you’ll find God’s answer to their agonized “Whys?”
When we understand at least a few of the whys, we have the confidence that we’re not simply suffering for nothing. And the best reason I can think of for my own paralysis is Romans 8:28. It says there that “All things fit together in a pattern for good, to them that love God, for the purpose of conforming you to the image of Jesus Christ” (personal translation).
Now, before my injury when I was a young teenager on my feet, I cared very little about being made more like Christ. The greatest amount of suffering I ever went through was sweating out twenty-five laps on the hockey field or failing a chemistry quiz, or perhaps feeling shunned by a couple of classmates in some clique.
Suffering seemed to have little connection with the abundant Christian life. I thought the abundant life meant less homework, more popularity, and good grades. Being made more like Christ was something to worry about when I got older.
My ideas took a sharp turn after my injury at the age of seventeen. Suddenly I began to see that suffering really was inextricably linked with being made more like Christ. Helplessness really had something to do with holiness, and pain had a great deal to do with piety. My value system began to change. The abundant Christian life now meant any degree of Christ’s character that could be found in me—like peace or patience, endurance, tolerance, kindness, sensitivity. It dawned on me that this is what real success and beauty was all about-Jesus living in, and reflecting through, me.
Now, don’t think I’m glorifying suffering. There is nothing intrinsically good about being paralyzed. There is nothing inherently good about blindness or deafness. There is nothing innately good about war or violence or deformities or divorce, bankruptcy or poverty. But these things—bad as they are—can fit into a marvelous plan for our good and His glory.
Remember the psalmist’s question? Here it is again: “Why do you hide your face and forget our misery and oppression?” Who wouldn’t have a hard time being assured of God’s unwavering love when, for His sake, “we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered”?
Yet, amazing as it seems, it’s this very phrase about suffering sheep that Paul picks up in Romans 8:36 to proclaim God’s love. Look it up for yourself. Even in the midst of pain, Paul says, even when our lives hang by a thread, it is in those very times that “we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God” (vv. 37-39).
Right now, put your problems on that list. Even these things, great or small, the things you’re struggling with, cannot separate you from the love of God. And the extra plus is that through it all Jesus is being ingrained in your character.
And that’s an answer you can live with.