Asking Why This Instant!

I don’t know why cancer takes a child.

I don’t know why some wives miscarry once, twice, five+ times.

I don’t know why she had to lose both legs. 

I don’t know why so many daughters don’t have daddies and sons don’t have fathers.

I don’t know why the imagination puts itself in a dingy box labeled “pornography” and traps itself there. 

I don’t know why some couples say their vows at 19 and never part until cozying up to a century, while others navigate a beautiful life with never a partner to share it with.

I don’t know why his marriage was torn apart when she decided she wanted a wife instead of a husband.

I don’t know why being wrapped in brown skin subjects her to a lifetime of “less than.” 

I don’t know why the brain deteriorates and the body breaks down.

I don’t know why mental illness is real.

I don’t know why some are born handicapped.

I don’t know why his future vanished in an instant, crushed by steel on that otherwise silent, pre-dawn road.

I don’t know why the only acceptable atonement for sin required ripping apart the triune God and torturing Him to death.

I don’t know why love hurts so much.

 

Why.

We have a million whys, you and me. 

What do we do with them?

 

Ignore them? Swim in them? Suffocate under them? 

Chris Stapleton, in “Broken Halos,” sings, “Don’t go asking Jesus why. We’re not meant to know the answers, they belong to the by and by.” 

Is that the answer? To simply not ask them? 

I don’t know. And I don’t have the answer that’s going to take away your whys. 

I do know we have options. We can ask why if we want to, or we can sit quietly beside our whys. We can pretend they don’t exist, or we can shake hands with them and acknowledge their presence. We can lift them up and release them, or we can wrestle with them until breathless with exhaustion. We can release our whys in a flood of tears, or we can drink them in and digest them. 

There’s no right or wrong way to handle our whys. 

When my whys are a wolf pack, snarling and closing in on me, my own hunt becomes one for safety, for peace. All I want is to run to my Shepherd. He’s unfazed by wolves. I just want to go and sit with Him. Go and cry there. Go and rest under His staff. Go and be me—the me He saw fit to bring into the world; the me He knew would ask a thousand whys; the me He knew couldn’t handle the answers.

You and me, we’re human. We’re born into finite flesh and blood. While we’re fearfully and wonderfully made, our skin is vulnerable to prey. I know this full well. 

So, for now, I beeline for Jesus and let my whys follow. In His presence we all sit. Somehow, my questions don’t consume me there. They lose their fear factor. And while they’re usually relentless, around Him they settle down. They get sleepy.

Funny thing about Jesus’ presence ... I used to try to escape it. Why press into a God who keeps answers from me? I figured I’d fight my whys solo … find my own answers. But when I tried, I got eaten alive. Misery, every time. 

I no longer try to assert my independence from my good Shepherd … simply because it hurts too much. I wasn’t created to wander alone among wolves. 

Do your whys chase you? Haunt you? Hold you captive? Leave you numb? What if, instead of finding answers to pacify them, you found peace sans answers? What if you let your whys join you in the vast, open field of the good Shepherd’s sweet, consuming love? Could you and your whys lay down together, under His staff, and be?  

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." —Isaiah 55:8-9

"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep." —John 10:11