Don't ask why

I won't ask why...it just is what it is. If there is a reason, I am not privy to it.

I looked at myself in the mirror, with my red and bloody nose, droopy eyes, and growly lungs. And I am in the best shape of all the friends and family I am currently in fervent prayer for. One friend's post was titled 'weary'. Knowing what that sweet woman has endured the past year, weary is a very mild understatement. But it is unlikely that if God never told Job 'why', He would tell me.

I guess 'why ' is not the right question anyway. I think the best question in the face of suffering, setback, and, despairing circumstances is perhaps 'how'.

How do I move on with contentment in the midst of the heavy hand I have been dealt?

Or even better,

How do I see beyond the pain to the beauty that surrounds me when I am too weary to open my eyes?

Ok, 'how' is almost as tough as 'why'.

'When' is definitely no better and fraught with frustration. None of us know when or even if the suffering will stop. 'Where' is easy but self evident thus silly. Same with 'what'. Usually what we struggle with is disturbingly apparent.

That leaves 'who'. 'Who' is our last hope in the wh family. On first blush, 'who' doesn't appear any more useful than 'where'. However, maybe 'who' is indeed the only answer. Who holds our future and our life in His hands and who knows what purpose every spark of being has in the whole vast universe? In the end, I suppose there is little else we can answer but that He must be trusted to ultimately bring a peace that surpasses understanding in the midst of unbearable times.

I won't ask why, but it is good for me to remember who.

Hebrews 2:6-9, 13-17 NIV

But there is a place where someone has testified:

"What is mankind that you are mindful of them,

a son of man that you care for him? You made them a little lower than the angels;

you crowned them with glory and honor and put everything under their feet."

In putting everything under them, God left nothing that is not subject to them. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to them. But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. And again,

"I will put my trust in him."

And again he says,

"Here am I, and the children God has given me." Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham's descendants. For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.