A woman in her prime is cut down by someone she doesn’t know or who doesn’t know her, an infant is put down for sleep and doesn’t wake up, or an adolescent or youth approaching adulthood is stricken with disease, for reasons unknown to us.
The old ones die and that is the nature of things but the young, the innocent, why does that happen? What purpose is served, what justice was needed?
We look on and we turn and say…Father?........
When I make that call I usually experience silence. There is no immediate response, no audible word, no scripture that illuminates. It’s silence.
But this isn’t a cue for me to figure, this is one of those things there is no answer for or that I’m not going to get one. For me the silence has indeed been a response to my call. It is a response that calls for me to think and remember and trust.
We are all born into the thick of things, not a perfect world which begins developing for good or bad at the time of our birth. The world, when we come into it is already what it is.
We were not there to see the emergence of mountains and flat lands from a wide expanse of waters. We did not watch as multitudes of creatures appeared in the clear waters of rivers and seas, multitudes of grasses and trees emerge from the earth towards the sky or watch as winged creatures appeared and soared there.
We didn’t witness an invisible breeze, stirring the dust of the earth, swirling it to standing form, moistened by the dew, and flow into the nostrils giving life to man.
We weren’t there to witness the emergence from one to form two that were created to be one.
If we had been there, we would have been born into a perfect world and none of the ills of this age we are in would have existed. There would be no questions from broken hearts.
But we weren’t.
Well, is that it? It is, I suppose, if we want answers that meet our sense of logic, that explain everything in terms acceptable to us, make things right, give meaning, from our perspective. But maybe we think too much of ourselves. After all, we are the created, not the Creator. And we are not all knowing.
“Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?...Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding…” Job 38:2, 4 AKJV.
We want our answers now. We want them to be what we think they should be. But Yahweh has created us to rise to a high standard and to achieve that by His ways and one of those ways is to remain in trusting and worshiping Him whether it makes sense or not, is easy or not.
In the garden Yeshua pleads, isn’t there some other way, as we do, asking does it have to be this way?
Yeshua was an innocent. There was no justification, no purpose, no meaning for His death, from a worldly perspective. But it happened all the same. He could have cried out…Father?... Those close to Him could have cried out… Father?......
But He accepted and trusted, went through it, never rebelling or questioning or doubting, rather submitting in love for the Father and out of love for His fellow man. Did He not?
“…never the less, not My will, but Thine, be done…” Luke 22:42 AKJV.
“Father forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Luke 23:34 AKJV.
Yeshua and what happened to Him is the pattern for us and how we should view things and act.
When circumstances, especially those that don’t seem right happen and we say: “Father, You ask too much. This is more than I can bare. Why Father, why?”, can we say “Ok Father. I don’t understand. It seems so meaningless. But it is Your will. And Your will and Your purpose is not meaningless. The ways which You achieve them do not reflect greater or lesser value of us, Your created ones. Your view and our fellowship with You is eternal. We sorrow now but we will not question. We trust You Father and we praise You.”?
Father, if You would please, be tenderly patient with us in our moments of anger and confusion, sorrow and question, when in our humanness we struggle to figure things out, things that we think just don’t serve a purpose.
In those moments Father, bring to our minds that You measure, and reward, by a different scale. The weights and measures of that scale, You have assigned value to, and their value is not determined by length of time, or scale of grandeur, or outward appearance, the standards of man.
In Your measure, small things can be great, great things can be small.
Enable us to be strong in trust and faithfulness to You in times when we see and when we don’t see.
As we praise and pray and live, Father, give us strength and comfort and peace so that we will not be overcome, so that we can represent You well and be pleasing to You.
May You be glorified Powerful, All Knowing, Just and Merciful One, our Father.
In Yeshua’s name we pray,
Amen.
May God’s love be in us all.
Elder.