Chuck Nesmith - June 2005
Why? That is the basic question of life. We are going along fine in life then something trips us up and we fall down. We get bruised. We get hurt. Our sensitivities are shaken and we cry out to God. Why was that needed? Did you have to hurt us so deeply? Things were just fine the way they were. Everyone was healthy, we had enough, no one hated us, our friends greeted us warmly and did not turn away.
Then God, or Satan, messed everything up. It was hard to tell which was which and who was who. We thought that Satan was the one that would hurt you and God was the good guy. God was the One that would come to your rescue. He would bail you out of a jam. He would not let you get fired, but instead would help you get the promotion. He would not let your children die but would raise them up from their beds of affliction.
But, the lines of distinction got blurred. We realized that God let the pain come. He did not prevent the disease. He allowed us to get fired, he allowed us to lose our home, he allowed a disaster in business, he allowed a child to die.
So, we begin to seriously question the benefit in believing in God? If God was not in fact our ace-in-the-hole in critical situations, used like a magic wand to alter the course of events in our favor, then did we really need an ace? Did we really need God?
That is the dead end the mind of western man so often comes to in a society that snubs anything spiritual. People abandon their reverence for God and follow their own paths. They make their own choices out of personal benefit and bitterly recount their foolishness in ever having trusted in some unseen force to work in their behalf.
And, the emptiness creeps in. They go about their lives putting on plastic smiles as if everything were as it should be. But, inside they are withered, dried-up, miserable and full of venom.
It is unavoidable. We were made for God. Without God our lives make no sense. Without God we are truly lost.
Meanwhile, in the heavenly realm, unseen by man, the Spirit of God has not rested but is waiting. And in the dark hours of the night, frustrated by their own humanity, hurting souls rise from their beds of sleeplessness and contemplate the meaninglessness of it all. It is then that the Spirit of God quietly draws close and whispers that he is still there. He never left. He has not forgotten them and he invites them to come home.
“What?” They scream. “Like you are really needed now?” They demand an answer. Where was God when they were suffering the hardship, the loss, the death of someone they loved? Why did he not rescue them, bail them out, raise up the dieing one? Why? Why?
But, the Spirit of God’s only answer is that he is still there, he never left their side, that he loves them tenderly and if they will turn to him they will understand. Not with their minds or intellects. They will not be able to identify cause and affect. No, this kind of understanding he will give is in their spirits. They will hear and see with their inner knowing. They will have the sense that even in the midst of their tragedy, God is somehow still in control. He is still caring for them, directing all of humanity in some unseen way and life will go on according to his plan.
Does it remove the pain? No, but it gives the pain the meaning of acceptance, of knowing that God has allowed it, that acceptance neutralizes the soul-searing acid of bitterness.
With that acceptance, the seed of hope is planted. Calm and balance begins to seep into their lives. And, as they reaffirm that God is, they begin to sense that better days lie ahead, they begin to find meaning against the backdrop of their pain, and they begin to consider that someday they will be able to give thanks to God for even this. Thanks because in the dark night of the soul, when everything was falling apart in their world, when nothing made sense, when pain was surging through their hearts and bodies and suffocating the very spark of life, God was always there. He never went away.