Questioning God...

There has been alot going on around here....happenings that cause you to stop dead in your tracks and reflect on your life, the life of others and ponder the question of God and his will. If any of you read my sister's posts over the weekend, you already aware that someone my family knows died in her sleep Saturday night. This woman, who was around the age of forty, left a husband, ten children (five months old to a senior in high school), family and lots of friends. This is just another happening that is hard to comprehend.

The list in the last six months is lengthy and unsettling....Katrina, the earthquake, my brother-in-law's cancer, and now this! Is there more death, despair, tragedy and death this year, the last five years, this last decade... or am I just getting older and more aware of man's mortality? Is it that, as a country, we have become so civilized, so sophisicated, so knowledgeable, so scientific, so confident that we have forgotten that we are not in control of this life? As christians, have we strayed a bit...have we been shy of speaking the truth, that we are just using this life to pass through to another life...the perfect life? I know I am guilty of this...my first thoughts when Katrina was churning in the gulf was to keep it tuned to the safety of the weather channel. My first thoughts of the massive deaths from the recent earthquake was that we should be lobbying for buildings to be built safer in California. When I was told of my brother-in-law's cancer, I wanted to rush my husband to the doctor so he could get checked so I could receive the okay! All these responses are quite normal and natural but it had me doing some hard thinking.

Do I think of all tragedy, despair, and death as distressing, a heavy blow, something that needs to be reasoned out? Yes, for the most part, I have been guilty. But recently, I have come, through God's help, to try to focus on the mystery of the bigger plan. God has shown me that there are things in this life that I will never be able to reason out, I will never come to understand, I may never even see the purpose in them. When my mind starts to go in the direction of trying to figure out God's purpose, I have to pause, remind myself of how minuscule my thoughts and knowledge of God are. My thoughts, for a moment, can be of sorrow, can be compassionate, can be caring, but then have to turn to rejoicing in the omniscience of our King. My words have to convey my trust in the unknown paths of a Father who made me for whatever time and purpose of his choosing. My mind has to wrap itself around the fact that I am just a vessel, He is the potter...some things in this life I just have to accept on faith that He knows what is best.

In this life, whether it is short or long, whether I have plenty or I am in want, whether things come easy or I have to work by the sweat of my brow, I want to be emptied unto Him...to have all parts of myself be one with Him. I want not to look inward but to look upward, to have a faith so strong that I choose to let the mysteries of this life be solved in knowning that my God has all the answers.

Not one sparrow will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. Matthew 10:29-30

We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God. 2 Cor.1:8-9