WHY?

Why, God?

Have you ever had an experience where you’ve doubted God?  Where you looked at what you went through and thought, “You have got to be kidding me!  How could God let this happen?”

I understand.  I’ve been there more times than I can count.  In some very heinous ways.

I've had a few friends who have opined on the subject matter in recent months, who have offered some extremely different viewpoints.

One, who now appears to be in quite the crisis of their own, said, “I wonder, too, how God could let such evil happen.  I think we need to grasp what pleasure we can find, right here, right now.” 

Basically, Carpe Diem.

That is a path that leads to death.

Another friend offered this wisdom:  “God is much more complicated than we give Him credit for.  He has these plans that are so complicated that they take thousands of years to execute.  Just look at Adam…and how long it took for God to redeem that situation…sometimes it seems like God doesn’t care about you at all, but that’s just because you are sitting in the middle of a Friday.  And you don’t know that there is a Resurrection Sunday just around the corner.”

And THAT Friday, what do we call it now?  We call it “Good Friday”. 

Good Friday.

Blackest of nights.  The moment of death.  When the sunlight disappears…God is there; with a redemptive plan so freakishly complicated that it is beyond our human minds in its time, scope, and depth.

Why does God just “sit back” and allow suffering?  If he allowed a part of himself to suffer, knowing that same part would celebrate that suffering in just a few days, then perhaps there is a piece of that puzzle I can’t yet see.

My dear friend spoke to me about God…reminding me that He is, above all, a Good Father.  And we forget, here on Earth, where all fathers are broken to some degree, what a Good Father is truly like.  A Good Father doesn’t look at one child and say:

I’m allowing you to suffer so you can help my other children through their pain…

I pre-ordained everything that would happen to you, so I planned for you to be abused…

NO!

A Good Father does not PLAN SUFFERING for his children.  He may allow consequences for certain behaviors, but that is a far cry from choosing to hurt your beloved child.  I would never plot to hurt my children…but if they were being disobedient and harming themselves, I would likely allow them to feel the results of their actions, hoping they would learn, change, and grow into their true potential.

If you are in a Black Friday, it’s okay.  Most of us have them.  The vast majority of us survive them.  Please know that there is a Resurrection Sunday.  It may not be three days away, three weeks away, or even three years away.  I wish I could give you some sort of assurance that, sometime in your life, your trials and pain will all come full circle and you will understand them.  But just as Adam, Abraham, Moses, and many others experienced; fruition may be something that happens long after you have left this earth.