Why
I couldn’t sleep and so I was getting a little reading done when something triggered this in my mind…
Every asked the question why? If you ask Emma Grace “why did you do that”, she will often reply, “Because I did.” I love it; none of this philosophical mumbo jumbo, no excuses to hide her motives, just a three year old who steps back with authority and takes credit for her action. Notice she takes credit. Now, parents we rarely ever ask why our children did something when they are behaving. I.e. we never ask why did you paint that beautiful picture on the proper piece of paper? However, we do ask “why did you scribble on the wall”. To that Emma Grace says “because I did”. (Realize this is cutter depending on my mood and the cost of what has just been destroyed). I think God often does the same. He never skirts responsibility. He never says I just wasn’t able to get there on time or I got stuck in traffic. Instead, when we ask Him why, He often seems to say “because I did.”
As I read the Scriptures I feel like God often speaks more clearly than I can bear at times. In fact, the more I read the word and meditate and dwell on the words of God the more I am amazed at what our Creator has taken the time over thousands of years to reveal to us. He is an awesome God. Yet, we often ask specific why questions and in those cases God seems to reply, “Because I did.” Now this is not a callous, careless response but a response that says without the answer to why, will you still trust me. Will you believe in my character with or without seeing all the whys? God says that His words and His grace are sufficient. That means they are not just adequate but completely adequate to meet all our needs.
Why doesn’t God answer all our whys; because He doesn’t, not because He doesn’t love us and not because He doesn’t care. Maybe one other way of getting at it is to say He has answered every question in His word that we will ever need to know. We can guess at the “how is this ultimately good” till were exhausted but in the end we will have to either trust He is good or rebel and determine because we can’t find the answer He must not be good.
When we are faced with why questions I believe we should stop and ask who. Who is God? What do I know of Him? Can I trust him? Is He faithful? Is He powerful? Is He in control? In the Bible’s answer to these questions the whys begin to fade and faith begins to form. We stop trying to understand our circumstances and we begin to understand our God. As we see Him we are able to make sense of how to deal with the why moments in our lives and move beyond them to Him.
Pastor Eddie