The Non-existent Answer

Sometimes, when all of life is crashing around me like the roaring waves of the ocean, I wish so much that I could just slip up to heaven and see the world from God's perspective. I wish I could crawl inside His mind and understand why He is Who He is and why He allows what He does! Why does He let the atrocities happen that do? Why are little children hurt, smashed, battered, destroyed? When something unfair happens to an adult it is so much easier to accept, at least to me it is. But children? Ones so innocent? Ones so impressionable? Ones who will live their lives with the 'knowledge' that whatever it is that has happened to them was actually their fault? Sometimes I want to just shake God and scream in His face about it. Perhaps no one else deals with this but I'm fairly certain that others feel it too. I want to know how He expects people to believe that He truly loves them when He allows such terrible things to happen to them. I know the 'free choice' argument. I'v used it myself. But when it comes down to the very wire of it none of those reasons make a difference. When faced with a shattered individual who has no moorings to stand on... What do you say? When you hold a child sobbing and broken and wracked with a pain so deep that there are simply no words... What do you say? Sometimes I get so frustrated with our 'all roses' mentality. Life simply is NOT all roses. There is pain out there that some of us have never even DREAMT of dealing with! Some of us are living every day with a wound so deep that our whole lives are built around it, but nobody talks about it because we are 'good Christians' and we know that God is love and He loves us and so it shouldn't hurt right? And all those poor people who are hurting so bad, if they just had God in their lives they would be so much better off. Very true statement. They would be better off, because God is a Healer! He is the Comforter! He is all wise and all knowing and all seeing!!

But, "what person perceives (knows and understands) what passes through a man's thoughts except the man's own spirit within him? Just so, no one discerns (comes to know and comprehend) the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God." 1 Cor 2:11. In my crying to Him about this, God brought this verse to me and as I read it and let it soak into my brain and heart, a new fact slowly began to dawn on me. Maybe I will never understand. Maybe there is no answer. Maybe I can't look long enough, beg hard enough, or wail loud enough to make God give me an answer to this cry. Perhaps instead I truly do simply have to accept it. Accept that people hurt each other. Accept that He allows children to be abused and neglected and STILL loves them. Accept that His heart breaks and cries when they hurt. Accept that as long as this earth stands, evil will continue, even to the innocent. Maybe instead of looking so hard for an answer to this question, I have to look for Who He is. The parts of Himself that He DOES reveal. Scripture is full of His goodness, His love, His gentle care for us. It is also full of His wrath, His judgement, His unending justice! God is merciful, and jealous. He is love, and punishment. He is gentle persuasion, and quick wrath.

I think I found my answer, but it may take me a very long time to truly accept it. My answer is that there is no direct answer. And yet there is. Perhaps it does really come back to the issue of free choice. For those of us who live our lives so oblivious to the hurting around us, we must choose to not have words. To not have answers. To listen and hold and comfort and not try to fix. To show love no matter what we may feel in our humanness. To be the gentle hands of Jesus, holding, wiping tears, making food, healing. And for those of us living with the deep scars of long buried hurts, perhaps instead of asking God "WHY??" we must instead learn to grieve. Learn to cry out our pain. To allow the memories to hurt and to ask Him to heal them. Maybe there is really no way through the hurt except to simply walk through it. It does come down to a choice on our part. We can choose to let it hurt, and let Him heal, or we can choose to lock it down, tuck it away, not let it be touched, and thereby allow it to control our whole lives and the lives of generations to come.

In the non existence of an answer, I found my answer. I must learn to know Him. To know His heart toward me, and toward every war torn, poverty stricken, sin scared child He created. He does not take away the freedom of others to hurt the innocent. But He offers His love and grace and peace to the innocent. And He heals. He heals when we choose Him. When we choose openness. When we choose freedom and light over darkness and pain.