The Why Factor

Everything has been put in place perfectly.  Nothing has been forgotten.  Prayer, check. Good works, check. Faith, check.  You're an on-the-ball Christian and the Lord has got to be smiling on you from Heaven.  Then just when your sun is shining most bright.....boom....the rain comes.  Oh not just any rain, a monsoon.  Problems come pouring into your life with a vengeance and you wonder....."WHY is this happening to me?".   You evaluate yourself and everything seems to be in tact, so you chalk it up to a test of your faith.  You keep moving with your head high and even manage to walk away with a stronger Christian resolve..  The waters dry up and the sun dances back in....and then dances right back out again.  If you thought you had it bad before, bad is looking pretty good now.  The little problems you were having before are now monstrous and they seem unbearable. 

Why now? Why here? Why This? Why Me?  There it is......the WHY factor.  The why factor loves to manhandle our peace and sanity.  Don't allow the WHY factor to bully you.  Give it the boot.   As Christians we need to understand that there are some things that are not meant for us to know or understand.   In much the same way we deal with our children, God deals with us.  Our wide-eyed eager child may come to us with a question that has an answer we know would be a bit much for them to handle at this stage of their lives.  So what do we tell them? "I'll explain it when you get older...."  And rightfully so.  They would only be more confused and frustrated if we tried to explain further.  Why complicate life for them now?  Later they will be mature enough and/or wise enough to really wrap their mind around the knowledge they are asking for prematurely.   The same applies to us.  There will be certain things that, as long as we are here on earth, we just will not be ready for.  God knows that.  So we have to wait until we mature as much as He deems necessary.  Furthermore, there are some things that are only for God to know, things that we couldn't possibly understand.  In the Bible Jesus said that even he didn't know everything that God knows.  Now Jesus and the Father are one.  So if God doesn't share everything with the Lord, who are we to expect that God should reveal everything to us. 

That's not to say that we should never ask God questions.  There will be circumstances and situations that God is more than willing to clarify for us.  There are also situations in which people have opted to go against God's will and do something that has no reasonable explanation.  We must also understand that there are other situations as well in which God knows the whys and has decided its best that we not know why.  In those cases, we are going to have to just let go and let God....

Scripture:

Proverbs 3:5

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not depend on your own understanding...

 

Prayer:

Lord, we are greatful that it is you who knows it all, because if we knew it all we wouldn't know what to do with it.  We trust you. You are God. Amen.