Church Matters – Sunday 30 August | Itchen Valley Churches

Sunday 30 August

10am Parish Communion – St John’s, Itchen Abbas

Why, Lord?

“Why, Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people?”

Exodus 5:22

“Doubt is not the opposite of faith; despair is. Faith often walks hand in hand with unanswered questions.”

Pete Greig, God on Mute

Recently I found myself having supper at the Tichborne Arms — a recommendation from a friend, and an excellent one at that. It was the hottest evening of the year. We sat beneath the softly lit awning, eating fish and chips while the summer air slowly cooled around us.

I was there with an old friend, someone who first walked through the doors of the church where I was serving as a curate in Richmond more than twenty years ago. He came to faith during that season, and over the years I have watched him grow into a deeply thoughtful, passionate, and godly man. He now lives not far from the Itchen Valley, but although we have kept in touch, we had not seen one another for almost eight years.

During those years his life has been marked by what Moses simply calls “trouble.”

He lost his job, and soon afterwards his wife lost hers. His father died following a long and painful illness in which, from a human perspective, God seemed to show little mercy. And over the last decade, four members of his extended family have taken their own lives.

As we talked late into the evening, the question that kept surfacing was the same question that rises from the pages of Scripture:

“Why, Lord?”

The temptation for a professional Christian — especially a clergyman — is to reach for a clever explanation, a neat theological framework, or a comforting verse applied too quickly. But I have learned that one of the holiest responses is sometimes simply:

“I don’t know.”

The Bible gives us permission to speak that way. Moses asked “Why, Lord?” Job asked it. The psalmists asked it repeatedly. Even Jesus cried from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

If God was willing to allow four hundred years of silence between the Old and New Testaments, we should not be embarrassed by moments when we have no adequate words.

What we can do is remain present. We can listen. We can pray. And sometimes we can place into someone’s hands a book that has helped us ourselves. In this case, I recommended Pete Greig’s God on Mute, a wise and compassionate exploration of unanswered prayer and the apparent silence of God.

Perhaps you are in a “Why, Lord?” season yourself. Perhaps the crisis is happening now, or perhaps, like my friend, the storm has passed but the landscape of your life still bears its scars.

The morning after our meal together, my psalm reading was Psalm 42, and it has become my prayer for him:

Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God.”

Psalm 42:11

I find those two small words profoundly moving:

“will yet.”

The psalmist does not deny the downcast soul. He does not pretend that faith removes grief, confusion, or exhaustion. Instead, he clings to a future tense hope.

I will yet praise him.

That, perhaps, is one of the deepest truths of the gospel. Christian hope is not the absence of unanswered questions; it is the stubborn confidence that unanswered questions will not have the final word.

Sometimes faith is not triumphant certainty. Sometimes it is simply holding on long enough to say:

“I cannot praise fully today, but by God’s grace, I will yet.”

with every blessing

David