ASKING THE QUESTION, “WHY?”

We ask a lot of questions, but perhaps the most asked question is, “Why?”

Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways? Why does your nose run and your feet smell? Why call it a building if it’s already built? Why are they called apartments when they are stuck together?

But the toughest, most painful question, is when you hurt or someone you love hurts and you ask, “Why?” For some of us, we ask it when we have a flat tire. Or get a cold. Or get caught in a freak rain shower. But we also ask it when the doctor says the tests results are positive, or when the boss calls you in and says, “We are going to have to let you go.” We ask it when there is too much month left at the end of our money. We ask it when we see our children’s dreams crushed. We ask it when people we deeply care for and are good people seem to get the raw end of the stick while others far less good seem to do well.

Our questions are important to God and there are many times in Scripture when people asked, “Why?” Many of the Psalms are written by David when he was hurting. Sometimes he received an answer. Sometimes he didn’t. The disciples asked Jesus why a man was born blind. The book of Job is of a man deeply hurting who wants to know why.

Somewhere along the way we have become convinced that life should be all good, all the time. Somewhere we have become convinced that if you are following God and God is good, life should always be good. And life isn’t good all the time. Life has a way of reminding us that we are broken people living in a broken world…and it hurts.

And somewhere we become convinced that if I just knew why this happened, it would be easier to take. But it isn’t. I live with a type of muscular dystrophy. I know the explanation of why I have it. I know there are deletions in part of my chromosomes of my DNA that allow a toxic protein that is used in my development as a fetus to “leak” into my muscle cells and it kills my muscle cells. I know the explanation, but it doesn’t help me walk better. It doesn’t help when my muscles ache. Knowing why something happens doesn’t always help to bear it.

I could tell you of the theological reasons of sin entering the world through the fall of man, but that doesn’t really help in a hospital room or the funeral home. We can ask, “Why” till Jesus comes again but we never get a response that makes us say, “Ah! So that’s it!” And we can go on with life.

Suffering is unfair. It kidnaps your attention and tries to force us to focus on our pain. But what it cannot do is steal Jesus Christ from you. If you can look away and beyond your pain to Jesus, you don’t always find the reason, “Why”. But you can find strength and comfort in His presence and His promise and His power and His love, even if you hurt. And in remembering and knowing, “Who” you are better able to face the question, “Why?” Trusting is not ignoring your feelings or pain. Trusting isn’t pretending everything is fine when it isn’t. Trusting is living a life of belief in and obedience to God, even if you never find the answer to “Why”.