Our questions were a tornado. Swirling rapidly towards us.
The funnel was a foresight of the destruction that was to come.
These homes in the path of the tornado were our faith.
The questions did not subdue in our prayers to silence them.
Instead, the wind and the world caused it to swell with momentum.
Terrified we stared it in the face. Knowing what could come.
Knowing the power and strength this tornado possessed.
The wind was strong.
We did not know if we had been rooted enough where we had been planted.
Were our foundations strong enough?
It was too late to run for the bunker.
We had stood too long staring our questions in the face.
Too much time had been devoted to building these concerns.
You could hear the questions coming, screaming at us in the intense wind. "Is this the way its supposed to be? What if I can't fix everything? How can I watch the ones I love most struggle? What if they let go? What does that say about God? Is God near the brokenhearted when he seems far and distant? Where is God when it hurts? Where is He in the struggle? What if He stays silent?"
Then comes the eery silence of destruction after a storm.
Here we stand, surrounded by the ruins of our homes and lives. Obliterated by the tornado, we found the questions remain. The questions were not the tornado. The questions were instead the prophecy and the hindsight.
And now the questions lay in our ruins.
Our faith was strong and is now crippled.
Our faith that defined us, we have now shed like skin.
Our faith that had become us was shifting.
Not because we had let go of our God. No, we were clinging to him more fully in this storm. But Sunday school did not equip us for these trials, Children's Church did not prepare us for these questions. And if it takes shedding our faith to know our God then we invite it courageously. Because we know Him. We have come to know him deeply and intimately. And for some reason, the truth they told us as children doesn't quite add up to truth. Here and now we are clumsily dancing with a perfect Dancer. Here as we dance, there is no room for doubt because our Savior is right in front of us. We can touch him, we feel him, we know him. But we had been taught all the wrong moves because our teacher was not our Savior and now that we were on the floor, it was different than what the textbooks had prepared us for. It was completely upside down. But this dance was more real and more lovely than anything I could have imagined.
So we stand. Our feet grounded. Everything we had been sure of, ashes. All that we had believed in, a mess.
And yet, our constant remained. He stood, held out his hand and invited us to a dance of wrestling.
A dance of struggle. It was not always graceful. There is stumbling, there is a stepping on toes. But there is humility and love. There are both hope and grace. Because the one who leads my dance is the one who makes beautiful things out of towns that have become destruction grounds for lives. The one who leads me is the one who creates kindness out of tragedy, life out of death, peace out of storms. Futures with loved ones may have been obliterated, our healthy bodies wasting away, our hearts shattered, bound, broken. But these things are just a shadow. We have been called to walk in the valley of the shadow of death. But it is just a valley, it is only a shadow. There is a full sun which points us to the Son. There is a mountain that must be climbed that takes us out of the valley. There is hope beyond comparison.
A wise and gentle teacher once walked me through this. I've been here before. He told us about the shelf that was in all of our hearts. The questions we fashion often become so overwhelming. Quickly, we are weighed down by the weight of these confusing words and fears. We are brought to our knees and nearly blinded carrying these questions. He told us then, that these questions, these conflicts we have with the God above are small and lifeless when we look into the eyes of our Savior. He is good. He allows us to wrestle with him with our questions in between. Ultimately, though, our questions belong on the shelf. I stood in my most broken place, sobbing because these questions were real. Where had God been when the hurricane wrecked my world? My life obliterated? Where had he been when my life burned to the ground with not a remnant of the past? My heart, dust. My soul, ashes. Where had he been when He took my best friend away? I stood there, and this kind and gentle teacher guided me to my Savior. He slowly spoke of God's truth, and how his characteristics are good and how He is kind. My questions grew dim. What I had been gripping for years, I released. I walked to the shelf and placed them there. It's been 3 years and they haven't stayed. Often I have removed them. But some have grown dusty. The oldest question there hasn't been taken in years. The one where as a small child we pestered our pastor with questions about the Trinity. Questions that could not be answered for our small hearts to grasp. But we accepted that God was good. There are the questions when I tried to grapple with why the sky was blue and the grass was green and everything was just so lovely. There are the questions when I shared the Gospel so clearly with my Jewish friend but she didn't respond and I couldn't understand why. There are the bigger questions of why God allows hurt, and why he healed my friend but didn't heal my mom. Why in 8th grade our friend ended his life? Why my classmate had a car wreck and floated away to you? There are questions that are too big, too hard. But they aren't too much of God. He can take the questions, and my hope is that one day, the bringing of my questions to God, He will destroy my shelf. Because in that moment, the questions will not matter because my faith that God was good was enough, and when I see him in Paradise, that will be true. He will be good and nothing else will matter because all my questions have been met with the Answer, Jesus himself.
Right now, I'm holding a few questions close-fisted. Soon, I will make my way to the shelf. Right now, I'm grappling with a few hard questions. Not as hard as they once were. Not as weighty as the ones that smacked me unexpected in my adolescence. But still, they are difficult. I feel my grip releasing because my eyes have drifted away. Slowly, everything is growing dim, all my fears are shrinking, all my pain, lessening. Because Jesus is so marvelous. He is the answer. I ask, he responds with a gentle love, "My steadfast love endures forever." I lament, "Why?" He does not tell me He is good, He shows me He is good. I long, he reminds me of Home. When I feel displaced, unloved and rejected, He says, "This is not your home, my love."
And so, the ashes, I invited him to rebuild.
My demolished heart, I invite him to start anew.
Dear heart, I know the questions you grapple with have pushed you under a heavy weight. I know these questions seem infused with your heart. Wrestle not the questions, wrestle your Savior. In all your pain, look instead to the One who has the Answers. In this trial of faith, peel your eyes off this broken world. Set your gaze ever on the goodness of our perfect God. I cannot promise there will be answers. I cannot promise that life with somehow become safe and happy. I offer the promise that has carried me through some of my hardest days and will continue to carry me for the rest of my life until I look face-to-face with Jesus and he brushes off the ache of this world and makes me brand new.
The funnel was a foresight of the destruction that was to come.
These homes in the path of the tornado were our faith.
The questions did not subdue in our prayers to silence them.
Instead, the wind and the world caused it to swell with momentum.
Terrified we stared it in the face. Knowing what could come.
Knowing the power and strength this tornado possessed.
The wind was strong.
We did not know if we had been rooted enough where we had been planted.
Were our foundations strong enough?
It was too late to run for the bunker.
We had stood too long staring our questions in the face.
Too much time had been devoted to building these concerns.
You could hear the questions coming, screaming at us in the intense wind. "Is this the way its supposed to be? What if I can't fix everything? How can I watch the ones I love most struggle? What if they let go? What does that say about God? Is God near the brokenhearted when he seems far and distant? Where is God when it hurts? Where is He in the struggle? What if He stays silent?"
Then comes the eery silence of destruction after a storm.
Here we stand, surrounded by the ruins of our homes and lives. Obliterated by the tornado, we found the questions remain. The questions were not the tornado. The questions were instead the prophecy and the hindsight.
And now the questions lay in our ruins.
Our faith was strong and is now crippled.
Our faith that defined us, we have now shed like skin.
Our faith that had become us was shifting.
Not because we had let go of our God. No, we were clinging to him more fully in this storm. But Sunday school did not equip us for these trials, Children's Church did not prepare us for these questions. And if it takes shedding our faith to know our God then we invite it courageously. Because we know Him. We have come to know him deeply and intimately. And for some reason, the truth they told us as children doesn't quite add up to truth. Here and now we are clumsily dancing with a perfect Dancer. Here as we dance, there is no room for doubt because our Savior is right in front of us. We can touch him, we feel him, we know him. But we had been taught all the wrong moves because our teacher was not our Savior and now that we were on the floor, it was different than what the textbooks had prepared us for. It was completely upside down. But this dance was more real and more lovely than anything I could have imagined.
So we stand. Our feet grounded. Everything we had been sure of, ashes. All that we had believed in, a mess.
And yet, our constant remained. He stood, held out his hand and invited us to a dance of wrestling.
A dance of struggle. It was not always graceful. There is stumbling, there is a stepping on toes. But there is humility and love. There are both hope and grace. Because the one who leads my dance is the one who makes beautiful things out of towns that have become destruction grounds for lives. The one who leads me is the one who creates kindness out of tragedy, life out of death, peace out of storms. Futures with loved ones may have been obliterated, our healthy bodies wasting away, our hearts shattered, bound, broken. But these things are just a shadow. We have been called to walk in the valley of the shadow of death. But it is just a valley, it is only a shadow. There is a full sun which points us to the Son. There is a mountain that must be climbed that takes us out of the valley. There is hope beyond comparison.
A wise and gentle teacher once walked me through this. I've been here before. He told us about the shelf that was in all of our hearts. The questions we fashion often become so overwhelming. Quickly, we are weighed down by the weight of these confusing words and fears. We are brought to our knees and nearly blinded carrying these questions. He told us then, that these questions, these conflicts we have with the God above are small and lifeless when we look into the eyes of our Savior. He is good. He allows us to wrestle with him with our questions in between. Ultimately, though, our questions belong on the shelf. I stood in my most broken place, sobbing because these questions were real. Where had God been when the hurricane wrecked my world? My life obliterated? Where had he been when my life burned to the ground with not a remnant of the past? My heart, dust. My soul, ashes. Where had he been when He took my best friend away? I stood there, and this kind and gentle teacher guided me to my Savior. He slowly spoke of God's truth, and how his characteristics are good and how He is kind. My questions grew dim. What I had been gripping for years, I released. I walked to the shelf and placed them there. It's been 3 years and they haven't stayed. Often I have removed them. But some have grown dusty. The oldest question there hasn't been taken in years. The one where as a small child we pestered our pastor with questions about the Trinity. Questions that could not be answered for our small hearts to grasp. But we accepted that God was good. There are the questions when I tried to grapple with why the sky was blue and the grass was green and everything was just so lovely. There are the questions when I shared the Gospel so clearly with my Jewish friend but she didn't respond and I couldn't understand why. There are the bigger questions of why God allows hurt, and why he healed my friend but didn't heal my mom. Why in 8th grade our friend ended his life? Why my classmate had a car wreck and floated away to you? There are questions that are too big, too hard. But they aren't too much of God. He can take the questions, and my hope is that one day, the bringing of my questions to God, He will destroy my shelf. Because in that moment, the questions will not matter because my faith that God was good was enough, and when I see him in Paradise, that will be true. He will be good and nothing else will matter because all my questions have been met with the Answer, Jesus himself.
Right now, I'm holding a few questions close-fisted. Soon, I will make my way to the shelf. Right now, I'm grappling with a few hard questions. Not as hard as they once were. Not as weighty as the ones that smacked me unexpected in my adolescence. But still, they are difficult. I feel my grip releasing because my eyes have drifted away. Slowly, everything is growing dim, all my fears are shrinking, all my pain, lessening. Because Jesus is so marvelous. He is the answer. I ask, he responds with a gentle love, "My steadfast love endures forever." I lament, "Why?" He does not tell me He is good, He shows me He is good. I long, he reminds me of Home. When I feel displaced, unloved and rejected, He says, "This is not your home, my love."
And so, the ashes, I invited him to rebuild.
My demolished heart, I invite him to start anew.
Dear heart, I know the questions you grapple with have pushed you under a heavy weight. I know these questions seem infused with your heart. Wrestle not the questions, wrestle your Savior. In all your pain, look instead to the One who has the Answers. In this trial of faith, peel your eyes off this broken world. Set your gaze ever on the goodness of our perfect God. I cannot promise there will be answers. I cannot promise that life with somehow become safe and happy. I offer the promise that has carried me through some of my hardest days and will continue to carry me for the rest of my life until I look face-to-face with Jesus and he brushes off the ache of this world and makes me brand new.
"When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you.
When you pass through the rivers,
they will not overwhelm you.
When you pass through the fire,
you will not be burned.
The flames will not set you ablaze."
Isaiah 43:2
"I believe in the sun, even when I can't see it.
I believe in love, even when I can't feel it.
I believe in love, even when I can't feel it.
I believe in God, even when He is silent."
~ etched onto a wall in a concentration camp during WWII
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