| I read some crazy questions in a magazine the other day: “Why are there flotation devices under airplane seats instead of parachutes? Why do they put braille dots on the keypad of the drive-up ATM? Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways? Why, when you transport something by car, is it called a shipment, but when you transport something by ship, it’s called cargo? Why do they have interstate highways in Hawaii? Why isn’t phonetic spelled the way it sounds?”
These questions underscore that a lot of queries aren’t worth asking. After all, they don’t have straight answers. But some questions are worth asking. Questions about suffering. Yet even these important queries don’t have straight answers. When I was first injured and facing the rest of my life in a wheelchair, the “why” question was the first thing that popped in my head every morning. Looking back, I’m not sure I would have understood, let alone been satisfied, had God given me answers. It would have been like pouring million-gallon-sized truths into my one-ounce brain.
Straight answers to larger-than-life questions don’t increase faith. The only way to increase faith, according to Romans 10:17, is through the Word of God. In essence, God tells us to walk by faith and not by sight. Having faith in God is where we find rest; we don’t find it in locating the answers we couldn’t bear to hear, even if they were given to us.
Don’t think answers will satisfy your need to know. Faith will, for it assures you that Jesus is the only one who holds all the answers. Someday he will pour out those million-gallon-sized truths. You’ll have all the straight answers. Until then have faith.
Father God, you know how much I yearn to understand why certain things happen. Help me to bring these puzzles to you and leave them at your feet as the burdens they are. May I leave your presence with a load of faith to replace the doubts. I pray, as the disciples did, that you would increase my faith. |
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