Years ago I served as a Hospice Chaplain in California prior to moving to Idaho. I was on call for the hospital chaplain and received a page asking me to report to the Emergency Department. When I arrived, several nurses told me that a young woman had been brought in by her boyfriend. She was dead on arrival. They had called the girl’s mother who was on her way, and I was asked to be with her when the news was broken. Upon hearing the news, the mother began to sob. She kept repeating one word, “Why?”
“Why?” is not so much a question as it is a cry of pain. We often make matters much worse when we try to answer as if it were a question. I simply held her for a while. Eventually her pastor arrived and seeing him she again began to sob out “Why?”
His response was to tell her harshly that Christians are not to ask why, that it is a lack of faith. As they turned to go, I slipped my card in her hand. A few days after the funeral she called, explaining that she could not stop asking “Why?” but felt she could not talk to her pastor. I told her to pray every day and ask God either to grant her the answer to “Why?” or take away her need to ask.
It was more than a year before I heard from her again. She called to tell me that she had been praying every day and that over the past weeks she realized that God had taken away her need to ask. She had found a measure of peace.
God doesn’t always give explanations, but he always gives a promise. When Paul asked God to remove his thorn in the flesh, God did not. He did, however, give Paul a promise that His grace would be sufficient. “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you.’” [2 Cor 12:8-9]
God took away Paul’s need to ask. We do not live on explanations or answers to our “why?” questions, we live on God’s promises and His grace.
