Recently, at the church where I pastor, I closed out a message about having faith like a child by reading the following passage from Hebrews 11:13:
All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth.
It’s a tough verse to swallow, because it cuts against the grain of our “results-based” culture that says we’ve failed if we don’t win, or achieve, or “fill this in with whatever result fits your situation.” In the message, I was making the point that we need to believe TOWARD things instead of just believing FOR things, but what really grabbed me was what I heard some weeks later.
[Tweet “We need to believe TOWARD things instead of just believing FOR things.”]As I was having lunch with one of the men in our church, he told me about that moment and about what he heard behind him when I read that verse. As the words came out of my mouth about how these great men and women died without fully receiving what they were believing for, a soul-wrenching response came from the heart and then the mouth of a woman sitting behind this man. Barely above a whisper, almost as if the words had come out before she could even process that they were audible to anyone else around her, she asked the profound question all of us have asked at one time or another:
“But, why?”
I haven’t stopped thinking about those 2 words since my friend told me the story as we ate together. In fact, I’ve sat down to blog about it a number of times but stopped because I didn’t know how to answer it, and then, it dawned on me.
I don’t have to, because God never did. At least, he never answered it the way we would have expected.
While that statement sinks in, take a quick journey back to the time of the most famous “why”-er of all time: Job. If you aren’t familiar with Job’s story, allow me a brief recap…
He was a good man, a righteous man. He was successful in business and was a father and a husband who enjoyed meals around a table full of family and laughter. He was healthy and strong. He was all these things until he lost all these things for no apparent reason, and that’s when he did what any of us would have done.
He asked God, “why?”
Four times in the third chapter of the book named for him, his grieving soul pushed that word through his heart and out of his mouth, the same barely audible plea that my friend heard in the row behind him in church. In fact, for 37 chapters Job asked that question in various forms while his friends (and I’m using that term loosely) tried to answer it.
They told him to get over it, to stop whining and to start repenting for whatever sin had caused the tragedy. In essence, his friends tried to help Job understand why, because they made the same mistake we do: they assumed that why was a question motivated by our lack of understanding.
But it isn’t.
[Tweet “Pain isn’t something that God will always explain. But it is something he will always comfort.”]Why is a question of pain, and while pain isn’t something that God will always explain, it is something he will always comfort.
If why was about wanting to understand, we’d ask it all the time, not just in the bad times. But we rarely ask it about the good things, do we? “Why did I get that raise? Why do I have such a great house? Why is my spouse so good to me?” We don’t ask why in our pleasure because deep down – in a part of our souls that we rarely tap into – we believe that we deserve the good things.
And because we don’t believe we deserve the bad stuff, we ask why when all of those good things go horribly wrong. “Why did I get fired? Why is the bank foreclosing on my house? Why did my spouse leave me?” Again, I’m not minimizing the pain. I’m trying to highlight it, to help all of us see that when we ask it, we don’t really want to understand, we want to be comforted.
For Job – and us – that’s exactly what God did. But it came in the form of an answer that none of us would have ever expected.
Instead of answering Job’s question, God asked him a different one.
Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? (Job 38:1)
It might sound harsh, but God took the next 4 chapters to ask Job that question over and over again. He does the same with us. We ask questions of pain, but God gives answers of perspective. He shows us his strength, his ability, his greatness. He doesn’t do it in a way that minimizes our pain, but rather in a way that maximizes his plan.
[Tweet “Perspective allows us to see that OUR story isn’t THE story, but rather it’s a part of HIStory.”]Perspective allows us to see that OUR story isn’t THE story, but rather it’s a part of HIStory. It allows us to see that there is a greater purpose than just our lives, and that we have not been overlooked by God. The men and women in Hebrews 11 understood that, and that’s why they were able to die believing forward, or as God put it, “seeing the promise and welcoming it from a distance.”
What does it all mean for you and me? How can this possibly help us struggle through the pain? I mean, perspective is great and all, but it doesn’t stop the hurt.
To answer that, let me tell you about the inner-ear infections I regularly got as a child. They hurt, and even now as a man, the pain would be enough to bring me to my knees. There was some comfort in perspective – I knew the pain of that infection would not last forever! But what helped me the most was laying my head in my mother’s lap and having her hold me close. Being with her didn’t heal my ear, but in a way that I cannot fully explain, it eased my pain.
We have what those men and women in Hebrews 11 saw from a distance. We have Jesus, and the fact that God sent Jesus into the middle of our pain-filled world shows that he was never content to simply give us perspective. He wants to give us his presence.
Job asked “why?” God asked “where?” And in Jesus, both of those questions are answered with “here.”
“Here I am. Here I am in the storm. Here I am on the cross, in the tomb, on the throne. I am with you in – and through – the pain that pushes the words ‘but why?’ over your lips.”
[Tweet “”Why” is a question of pain. “Where” is a question of perspective. “Here” is an answer of presence.”]“Why” is a question of pain. “Where” is a question of perspective. But “here” is an answer of presence. God is with us. In Jesus, God saw our pain, heard our cry, and answered it with himself.
