I Don't Know Why...


I don't know why... and truth be told, sometimes I wish I did.

I don't know why bad things happen to good people.

I don't know why God takes them young and full of life.

I don't know why death hurts so much.

I don't know why Devon Smiley was killed this week.

I don't know why or how things seem to go on without someone that we knew or loved.

This week has been hard for a lot of people in this place that I have come to call home.  I have never appreciated or valued community more than this week.  To see how people have come together in the midst of horrible news, to see how students just want to be with one another in loss, anguish, and grief; to see how far reaching news, and even love, travels is simply astounding. #DevoStrong

We need each other in times like these.  We need each other to lift us up, to help us hold our heads up, to check on us, to let us cry or laugh or tell stories.  We need community even though it feels like we want to be alone.  We need people who will push us to engage and to not shrink away.  We need people to be around when there simply are no answers.

I don't know why... and I don't always like that.

But what I do know is what the Apostle Paul writes about in Romans 8:38-39:  "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."  Nothing will separate us from God's love in Jesus.  NOT ONE THING.  Not death.  Not life.  Not things present, or to come, or powers.  There is nothing that stands in the way of God and us.

I'm convinced of that fact.  That has been true in my life up until now, and maybe yours too.  While I don't understand how things have happened sometimes, while I don't know if things are all planned out or why bad things happen, I do know and trust in God and God's love who has been faithful to me and to all of God's people for longer than any of us have been alive.

This verse fills me with hope.  Hope that in the end things will be okay, hope that eventually we'll find the strength to put one foot in front of the other, one eye lid blinking at a time.  It doesn't take away the pain; sometimes our circumstances don't seem to (pardon my french) suck any less, but hope is the thing that we have to cling to in tough times.  Hope is the ray of sunshine peeking through the clouds, it's the friend who shows up or texts at the time they needed to, it's the force that gets us out of bed to face tomorrow.  Hope is God never leaving us and loving us more than we will ever know and using other people to show us that love.  Not one thing can separate us from God.

I don't know why.... But I do know God.... and God always keeps God's promises... of life... of love... of hope...

Prayer:  Help us, O God, in the midst of things we cannot understand, to believe and trust in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, and the resurrection to life everlasting.  Amen.

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