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Searching
Where is God? Is God? Why is blood required? Why did this happen? Who will help? What do I do now? Why?
Whys are a part of our lives; every day presents us with problems to be solved and answers to be found. Some of the hard questions we can answer and some are never answered.
We have access to numerous references from which we can seek answers, and the Scriptures are without doubt the most valuable and source rich referral we have available to us.
When thinking of the really hard questions I know of none more difficult than the “Why” that we ask regarding the death of one we love, especially if that one is our child.
Is not Job the quintessential model for many of the answers we seek? Job lost it all. He lost his children, ten of them at one time; all of his wealth, his home, he lost his health. There was nothing left to Job but his aching sick body, and his wife, and his three friends.
There are those who condemn Mrs. Job. Why they cannot feel her pain and her hopelessness? Mrs. Job was not numbed by affliction to her body. She too had lost everything including her children. Her husband was all she had left and yet she had no husband able to offer comfort to her. Is it any wonder that she felt too much pain at seeing her good husband suffer without reprieve? Should we condemn her for the expression of the futility she was experiencing in the chaos of her life?
Grief from the loss of those so dear to us has its way of taking the desire of future from us. At the time of the occurrence we look for nothing but to awaken from the nightmare hoping to find the pain nothing more than a bad dream. We wish desperately for life to return to normal.
Job’s three friends are condemned by many and certainly God Himself condemned their words. What happened to those three men? They originally came to comfort Job, as was the practice of their culture when disasters struck.
Job’s friends became horrified and afraid that if one as Job, whom they had known to be a righteous man, could suffer like Job was suffering then it might also happen to them. Their self-preservation engaged and they began to assure themselves that because they were righteous men these things could not touch them and by logical deduction, Job then must have been hiding something.
What was the great Eureka of Job’s experience? Was it not that he found that God was involved and was in control? Was it to let Job understand that his offering of ritualistic observances were not the satisfying relationship for either himself or for God?
In Isaiah chapter 57:1 is written a possible answer for is us regarding the death of good people: “The righteous perish and no one lays it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken from the evil to come.”
Indeed, some questions have no answer acceptable for us, if God told us why, it would not be acceptable. We would argue, and God is not into that. We know that God is altogether good and kind. Whatever God does or permits is to be to the advantage of those who are looking in His direction.
Crushing occurrences in our lives cause us to find solace in such lines as those found in the old hymn, “This world is not my home, I’m just a passing through; my treasure’s are laid up somewhere beyond the blue. The angels beckon me to Heaven’s open door, and I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.”
The really hard question, the really serious question is, “Do we really expect to go there?” Do we truly believe Heaven is?
The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.
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