God makes abundant sense when out lives abound in blessings, when our requests and prayers receive a resounding “Yes !” from Him. Then we really love God AND feel loved by Him, right?
It’s a whole different experience when the blessings stop for seemingly no reason. When hardships or trauma – especially the loss of our Beloved – instead replace God’s blessings, then God truly doesn’t make sense to us! Oftentimes we begin to doubt God’s love and caring nature towards us. In our agony we groan , “how could the God I know not protect me from this tragedy? I thought He loved me!” We grow despondent as God’s silence to our prayers leaves us confused, doubting God’s love, His Promises. If you are a long time Christian, you have wandered down this ‘Doubter’s Road’ in your walk with God. I certainly have!!
In James Dobson’s book, When God Doesn’t Make Sense, Dobson help us better understand God at such times of human struggle [pgs. 60-63].
We are initially reminded that the Scriptures describe God as our loving Father. Selecting two of many, look at Psalm 103:13, “As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear (deeply respect or have reverence for) Him.“ And in Isaiah 66:13 God is likened to a loving mother: “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you.” Continuing the narrative, Dr. Dobson next shares a true story to remind us that God’s love is analogous to the earthly, human love [if not even greater!] felt by parents’ for their own children.
James’ three year old toddler, Ryan, had a terrible ear infection that had kept him and the whole family awake for most of the night. At the pediatrician’s the next day, the doctor confirmed a serious eardrum infection, caused by an errant scab, that required the painful use of a pick-like instrument inserted into the eardrum to resolve the matter. As mom & dad readied themselves to assist the doctor, “our toddler had other plans!”
After several unsuccessful attempts by mom to hold a screaming, squirming toddler, James takes over. Wrapping his 200 pd, 6’2” frame firmly around Ryan, Dad secures him, listening in agony to his son’s terrified and pain-filled screams. James describes this moment as believing that “…I was in greater agony…than my terrified little boy.” With tears rolling down Ryan’s tiny face, his eyes begging his daddy to free him from his suffering, James concludes that “It was one of the toughest moments in my career as a parent.” Dads & Moms everywhere can relate to James’ own agony when they too suffer, along with their child, in similar situations!
Later James reflected on the event and what was most hurtful for himself as he looked at Ryan’s face: “Though he was screaming and couldn’t speak, he was ‘talking’ to me with those big blue eyes….saying, ‘Daddy! Why are you doing this to me? I thought you loved me….How could you? Please, please! STOP hurting me!’” [pg. 62].
James continues his reflections, reminding himself how impossible it was to explain to his distraught toddler that his suffering was necessary, for his own good, that it was love that required he be held down on the table. ““…. but in his immature mind, I was a traitor who had callously abandoned him“ [pg. 62].
Dr. Dobson’s reason for sharing this experience is to help us know that God too feels our intense pain and suffers just as James had similarly suffered during his son’s ordeal. Dobson reminds us of the broad range of human emotions Jesus experienced. Citing two examples of many, Jesus was “deeply moved in spirit and troubled” when Mary wept over her brother, Lazarus,’ death [John 11]. Romans 8:26 tells how God’s Spirit intercedes for us with “groans that words cannot express.”
Dobson continues that a logical conclusion of Christ’s words to Phillip, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father,” in John 14:9, is that our Father “…is passionately concerned about His human ‘family’ and shares our grief in those unspeakable moments“ [pg.63]. A far cry from us feeling abandoned because we perceive God as having forgotten us in our hour of need!
James’ inability to make sense of Ryan’s suffering to his young toddler, similarly parallels our Father wanting to explain to us, His children – with our ‘human limitations’ that our agony is necessary and does have a purpose. That indeed there are answers to the tragedies of life….and He so anticipates the day when we will understand what was occurring in our time of trial!
After 30 years as a grief counselor, I too have come to believe we will “get” the bigger picture, the “Why’s” that are hidden from us now because of our human limitations. Just as adult Ryan will similarly “get” his dad’s own actions when someday, he too is a father of a three year old toddler! So remember this true story, as I do, of Dr. Dobson when ‘God make NO sense,’ causing our faith in Him to waver, okay? Amen!