Trust God in our Fears
Friends in Christ, Today the first reading is from the Book of Job. Job has many problems: tragedy, sickness – and he has been trying to figure out why God allows such things to happen to him. At one point he really comes to some wisdom. He says that God is all powerful; God makes mountains tremble – he causes earthquakes which make even huge buildings shake or collapse; God commands the sun to rise and to set, and he commands the stars. It is God who made the constellations in the heavens, and who does such marvelous things which cannot be fathomed. And if God is so great as to do all this, and much more, who am I to say to God, ‘What are you doing?’ Who am I to question God’s plan?
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Job, like us in our own life, wrestles with the question of why does God allow pain, suffering, incomprehensible things to happen? The Book of Job asks, ‘Why does God allow suffering?’ He wrote this so long before Jesus would come; before Christ would stretch out his arms in love, suffering with us, and for us.
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God came into our world in Jesus, not to take away suffering, but to enter into it, to make it salvific, to give it meaning. Job did not know that when we suffer, God is suffering with us. When sadness fills us, Jesus feels exactly what we feel – with us. Job did not know this. But his insight, his wisdom, is good. God has done such incredible marvels, just look at creation, he says. Look at the power and wonder of creation. We cannot make a planet, or even a butterfly, but for the Lord it is simple. God is clearly very great. Then can’t we trust him? How can we doubt him, or question his ways?
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A little boy needed some surgery, it was the only way to make him better. He was being taken down the hall on the gurney to surgery, and his father was walking along with him. The boy cried and cried, ‘Why daddy, why are you doing this to me?’ What can the father say? The child can’t understand. The father can only say: ‘Trust me.’ I love you, and so trust me.’
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This is what our Father-God says to us in our troubles, and pain, and problems: ‘I know you can’t understand. ‘ But just trust me.’ I am with you in this.
