What happens inside your soul when crisis or disaster
strikes your life? How do you
feel? What do you say? Let me share with you words of pain from someone whose
faith was put to the test by devastating losses. When life hurts, have you ever
screamed thoughts like this?
- “Why didn’t I die at birth, my first breath out of the womb my last? … I could be resting in peace right now, asleep forever, feeling no pain.”
- “I hate this life! Who needs any more of this?”
- “God, how does this fit into what you once called ‘good’? … Can’t you let up, and let me smile just once …before I’m nailed into my coffin, sealed in the ground, and banished for good to the land of the dead?”
- “Please, God … address me directly so I can answer you, or let me speak and then you answer me. How many sins have been charged against me? Show me the list—how bad is it? Why do you stay hidden and silent? Why treat me like I’m your enemy?”
- “My spirit is broken, my days used up. … I can hardly see from crying so much. … My life’s about over. All my plans are smashed, all my hopes are snuffed out.”
- “Why do the wicked have it so good, live to a ripe old age and get rich? … Their homes are peaceful and free from fear; they never experience God’s disciplining rod.”
- “God has no right to treat me like this—it isn’t fair! If I knew where on earth to find him, I’d go straight to him. [But wherever I go, he’s not there.]”
- “People are dying right and left, groaning in torment. The wretched cry out for help, and God does nothing, acts like nothing’s wrong!”
- “I shout for help, God, and get nothing, no answer! I stand to face you in protest, God, and you give me a blank stare! … What did I do to deserve this? … Haven’t I wept for those who live a hard life, been heartsick over the lot of the poor? But where did it get me? I expected good but evil showed up. I looked for light but darkness fell. My stomach’s in a constant churning, never settles down. Each day confronts me with more suffering. I walk under a black cloud. The sun is gone.”
Have you ever had thoughts like that in the midst of trouble?
If you have, does that mean you aren’t a good Christian? If you scream at God
when you feel like God has disappeared from your world, have you failed the
test of faith? Should you be more like Job, famous for his faith when
afflicted with suffering? He lost his
family (his adult children were killed). He lost his wealth. He lost his
health. And yet he spoke with rock-solid conviction. Job’s famous words were written down and
inscribed in a book forever: “I know
that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and
after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I
shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another” (Job 19:25-27
NRSV).
Perhaps you are more like Job than you realize. All of the words I quoted to you at first —
words of complaint, of accusation against God, of desperation and wanting to be
dead — those all were words of Job. (Bible quotations were from The
Message, copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Referenced verses –
Job 3:11,13; 7:16; 10:3,20-22; 13:20-24; 17:1,7,11; 21:7,9; 23:2-3,8-9; 24:11-12;
30:20-28.)
Job’s words of resurrection confidence are surrounded in
Scripture by many words of grief and doubt and heartache. People speak of “the
patience of Job” — and yes, the patience of a faithful heart remained alive in Job.
But that patience of faith existed in the midst of the frayed nerves and
tortured soul of a life under horrible strain. Job’s wife is often criticized
for telling her husband to “curse God and die” (Job 2:9) when everything fell
apart for them. But I’m sympathetic toward Job’s wife. She was a mother who
lost her children and could not be comforted. Her heart was overwhelmed with
pain. And Job, too, struggled with that pain. Job wrestled with God in his
heart, and went back and forth in his thoughts.
The same person who expressed all the anger and hurt I shared with you a
few moments ago also said:
- “Even if God killed me, I’d keep on hoping.” (Job 13:15 The Message)
- “All through these difficult days I keep hoping, waiting for the final change—for resurrection!” (Job 14:14 The Message)
- “Where then does wisdom come from? And where is the place of understanding? … God understands the way to it, and he knows its place. … Truly, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.” (Job 28:20,23,28 NRSV)
Isn’t that the way that faith is in our lives? We go
back and forth in our thoughts, between hurt and hope. We cry out to the Lord,
“I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24) If you read the Psalms, you’ll
hear words of joy and praise as well as words of anguish and questioning. If
you listen to Jesus himself, hanging on the cross, you’ll hear him scream, “My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34) as well as, “Father, into
your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46 NRSV). You’ve likely seen this same
thing in the lives of Christians you have known, or in your own hearts as
God’s people fighting the good fight of faith. I’ve sat with a woman outside the intensive care unit, where her husband was going
through organ failure after diabetes had done decades worth of damage to his
body. I’ve sat with the family of an Air Force colonel who died in a tragic plane crash — not in
battle, but while assigned to supervise younger pilots practicing for an air
show. Things happen that seem senseless,
merciless, unfair, intolerable. We cry
out in distress and anguish, and at the same time call out to God in hope. When God seems to have abandoned us, that’s
when we cling most urgently to his promise that he never will leave us, never
will forsake us (Deuteronomy 31:6, Hebrews 13:5).
Martin Luther spoke often about how God reveals himself to
us in hidden ways, in the midst of pain and suffering and the cross. We tend to
want God to show himself by big and bold and obvious blessings happening in our
lives. But more often, God’s deepest work on our hearts happens through
difficult things we don’t want to endure. In his Heidelberg theses (which he
composed when under pressure to defend his teachings), Martin Luther said this:
- “Now it is not sufficient for anyone and does no good to recognize God in his glory and majesty, unless he recognizes him in the humility and shame of the cross. Thus God destroys the wisdom of the wise, as Isaiah 45:15 says, ‘Truly, you are a God who hides himself.’”
God’s greatest work in this world was accomplished when God
seemed to be absent from the scene, when Jesus was hanging on a cross, dying in
shame, with people shouting obscenities at him.
That’s not where people thought they’d find God. Yet that was how God
had chosen to show himself and to save the world, through Jesus’ suffering. And in our own lives too, we are drawn closer
to God, made more dependent on God, when facing life’s agonies and, ultimately,
death. So when the difficult days come,
yes, we will cry, we will scream, we will hurt. But we also will trust God is
working in his own mysterious ways to draw us closer to himself and to draw us
on in the direction of heaven. Because
ultimately, “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of
things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1 NRSV).
The fact that we have faith doesn’t make us immune to hurt. Sometimes
we forget that. I’ve known some Christians who’ve undergone a great loss or
catastrophe, and they paste on a smile because they think a Christian should
never be sad. They don’t allow themselves to grieve because they think grieving
would mean they weren’t expressing hope. They may shed a tear at the funeral,
but the day after they expect themselves to be putting all the sadness behind
them. That’s an artificial understanding of our Christian hope. We don’t pretend
we aren’t hurting. We acknowledge the full reality of pain and suffering, of
sin and death, of the grave and loss. And at the same time, we cling to hope in
the power of the resurrection. Think of Jesus, who broke down in tears when his
friend Lazarus died – even while he knew he was going to raise Lazarus back out
of his grave. Jesus felt death’s pain even when he had the power to overturn
death. We need not gloss over the ugliness and bitterness of awful things that
happen to us in this world. In the midst of that ugliness, we still seek God’s
face (Psalm 105:4) and believe in his mercy.
When you’re facing loss, hardship, heartache, tragedy, it’s
normal for you to cry out in pain. The great patriarch Job cried out again and
again, begging God for answers. God remained silent for a time, but he did hear
Job and he did finally answer him. And God hears you when you cry too. God is
helping you even when you have a hard time feeling his support. He reminds you
of his promises. His Spirit helps you hang on and have hope. Maybe you don’t
have the patience of Job. Then again, even Job didn’t have the patience of Job!
But all of us, as God’s people, will join with Job in confessing our faith. We
say:
- “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another” (Job 19:25-27 NRSV).
That is our confidence, our cry of faith, even when this
life is so often so full of so much pain. We cry with hurt, but we also cry
with hope. How our hearts yearn within us!
