Why?

On our way to and from our short missions trip to Mexico, a few weeks ago, we passed through Why, AZ. I don't know why it's named that, but it got me thinking about something.

I shared this with a friend several weeks ago, and then a conversation I had with another friend this weekend prompted me to dig it out and post it here:

When I was in college, I struggled a lot with my faith and questions regarding what I actually believed. I was and am still an analytical thinker, majored in mathematics and really needed "proof" for everything. Every question that was raised against what I had been raised to believe (and in a secular college, believe me, it was almost a daily thing) needed to be answered, explained, disproved. I was miserable. I hadn't quite grasped that I serve a deeply mysterious God whose depth and greatness I will never be able to fathom. I was 21, knew a lot more than I know now, and thought that if I couldn't understand something, it must not be right or true. I struggled, I researched, and I found a lot of answers. But those answers never brought me the "sureness" I was looking for.

There came a point in my struggle that I had to stop looking for a rebuttal or answer to every question. What finally came to me, and I see the wisdom in it now that I'm older, was that I had to figure out what I really, really knew. The world is so relative to each person's experience, and you don't always know what you know or don't know.

And I realized that what I knew for sure was the feeling deep in my heart, the sense of God's spirit, even though I never "heard his voice", the true sureness of know him and his love for me. It was "realer" and truer than any argument, for or against his existence. It was truer than how I felt, or what I didn't know, or what I thought I knew. I knew that I knew God. One of my favorite scriptures is in 2 Timothy 1:12 when Paul says, "That is why I am suffering here in prison. But I am not ashamed of it, for I know the one in whom I trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until the day of his return." I know in whom I have believed. And that answers any "why" that might come up.

One of the things I wanted to post on the Baby Blog, but haven't had time to really do it right yet, is just about that word "why". I used to ask it a lot, about the things I see in the world, the things that I've seen happen in churches, and the things that happen to me. I once heard a woman who had lost her 6-year-old daughter to a long battle with cancer - and they were leaders in the name-it-and-claim-it Word/Faith movement in Tulsa - speak about the question "why?". Obviously, she had many reasons to ask why in the aftermath of losing her daughter to illness, when they knew and believed that God had provided for our health through Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. And she said, and this is obviously a paraphrase from my remembering of what she said, that God said to her that the root of the word why is in chaos. That no matter how many times or ways that God could explain to us the "why" of what happens, it truly is beyond our scope at this time to understand. And that she was to trust in him and his love and know that he knew why.

I was surprised when we lost the baby that I never felt the need to ask why. Because I know in whom I have believed, and I know that he has a plan for me, and for us, and for our family. I don't need to know why because I know that he was there, and we were supported and comforted and blessed in our loss.

I read a book several weeks ago that astounded me both with its intellectual and emotional depth. A friend of ours had given it to Martin and he hadn't made it past the second chapter. I picked it up because there was nothing else in the house to read (and we'd shut off the TV for 3 weeks during the church's fast).

I think I read it in a day. I was so excited about what this book had to say that I recommended it to several friends. Terri's reading it now, and I'm eager to hear her thoughts on it.

It's a simple book. A relatively short book. A novel, of sorts (anyone who knows me knows what a struggle it is for me to read anything else!). And the portrait it paints of God - of the Trinity, actually, which I enjoyed and accepted although I don't believe in that particular theological construct, but that's an entirely different discussion - is astounding. The answers, and I use that term loosely, that it offers for one of the biggest questions of humanity ring so true. This book speaks to God's love in the midst of tragedy and sin and the unspeakable things humans do to each other. It speaks of relationship and forgiveness and the true depth of God's love.

For those of those struggling with a "why", I think that this book will help you to come to the place where you can let it go as well.

Read it and let me know what you think.