Snow
This past week in Ashland, Ohio has been quite rough. A young gal died at the local university and many people, some close friends of mine, lost their jobs at different places throughout the town. There seems to be so much pain in the world at times and I begin to question and ponder, what is happening here? Is God absent? Does God care?
Many followers of “the Way” have been taught for years that prayer works. What about the times where it seems it doesn’t. It’s one thing to know (intellectually) that prayer works. It is quite another to know deep down to the core of our being the reality of answered prayer, the reality of a loving God. The Hebrew has an interesting word for this kind of “know”, yada. Yada is the intimate knowledge that a husband and wife have of one another. Yada is the type of knowledge the Lord has of His children.
Driving to work today, I was blinded by the sun glimmering off the freshly fallen snow. Snow is a bittersweet thing to me. Sure it’s beautiful as it’s falling. And I totally love the idea of snow around the holidays. But snow also means winter. Winter means cold. Cold is not handled well by this little, Southern body.
So, I walked outside today mumbling and grumbling about the cold, about the blinding reflection off the snow, and the slush all over the roads. I drove down street by street to my workplace griping about the coming of winter. “Why can’t Autumn last longer,” I said to myself in the car, “and why won’t my car heat up quicker, I’m freezing!”
As I sat down at my desk, however, another wave of thoughts flooded my mind. What is winter like without snow? For people of Northeast Ohio (my stompin’ grounds) winters can be brutal not just because of cold and snowfall but because of consecutive days of overcast skies. Where is the sun? When will we be able to feel its heat again? Life seems to have stopped. Trees are bare skeletons of themselves. The grass is not growing. Flower bulbs are hunkered down in the ground waiting for the warmth of Spring. Bears are hibernating. Winter seems like a season to simply get through.
In this quasi-death of the land, God sends snow. When I cannot see the sun, my moods are changing because of lack of sunlight, and my words speak disdain for winter, God sends snow to blanket the landscape. The reason snow is so beautiful is because it’s really a miracle. It takes a “blech” landscape and makes something new. What once had been bare bones is now brought to life via the wonderful miracle that is snow.
I’m reminded of the Book of Job. This book shows a fellow journeyman struggling to come to terms with why he lost his family, his wealth, his home, everything that you and I give our identity over to in hopes of satisfying the deep longings that are meant to connect us to God. In other words, this guy is suffering!
His friends tell him that there is hidden sin in his life. His wife tells him to curse God and die. The world is screaming at him to give up. There is no use trying anymore. You’ve lost everything!
At the end of this story, Job gets his opportunity to have the audience of God. He cries out to God about the sufferings and struggles that have overtaken his life. He points a finger at God and asks the question that is quick to come to mind when we enter periods of suffering; Why?
The why is perfectly legitimate. The why is our attempt to make sense of the chaos that has enveloped our lives. The why is a question of astonishment, dissatisfaction, betrayal, and hopes of getting to the bottom of our pain. The why, however, is the shallowest of questions. No person in pain has ever been comforted by knowing why the pain happens. The why is a short-term fix for what is often long-term pain. The why offers quick fixes, easy responses, fast solutions to the complex, intricate, confusing messes in which we find ourselves.
God, instead, answers the who question. At first this seems absolutely absurd. Why would God answer Job’s lament with a long listing of who He [God] is? The why is the question Job is asking. Does God not care about Job’s circumstances? Is God so obsessed with Himself that He is unable to show His great compassion on Job’s predicament?
But, if we look down deep in ourselves in times of tragedy, we realize how painfully inadequate the why question is. It doesn’t remove the pain. Talk to people who have lost a loved one and the why offers no satisfaction. Why does not eliminate grief. Why does not fix the problem.
The who question helps us find constancy in our lives. Job’s deeper cry was not one of why but one of who is this God that He would allow such pain? The why is rooted in a quasi-optimism that says if I know all the facts I can make things better. The painful reality about pain is that no why can make us feel better.
Scripture seeks to answer the who question because that is grounded in hope. Hope is grounded in the character of God; a character marked by love, faithfulness, goodness, patience, and abounding mercy. Hope says that there are some things in life that we cannot think ourselves out of or buy ourselves away from. BUT, through it all, God is good. And what God is up to in the pain is just as real as the pain itself.
Maybe your life seems a little bleak here lately. Maybe the landscape of your spirit is feeling a lot like winter. Maybe you’ve lost something or someone. Know that the pain is real and that God meets you in the pain.
May you be able to realize that on the cold, cold days of life, this God intervenes. May you yada God and one another during times of hardship and tragedy. And may THIS God offer you a little snow to give you hope and promise in your time of uncertainty.
Tags: