Home > Resources from Discovery House > When Life Takes What Matters > Part 1

This is not an introduction; it’s a prayer. A prayer gathered from days of struggling to somehow turn words and sentences into comfort and hope. A prayer for you. For this terrible loss you’re facing. Or for this loss on top of all the others.

Loss comes in many shapes and sizes, but it always comes accompanied by pain and sleeplessness. This prayer was found in the rumpled sheets of a sleepless night. I have tossed and turned with you in your pain because I have tossed and turned in my own. God’s Spirit yearns through me to touch you tenderly where you hurt the most.

This is a prayer of understanding, reluctantly learned in the school of loss. Some of its lessons you will find in the words of this book. Life can be very difficult.

But most importantly this prayer is portable and very persistent. It will go with you and stay with you. And for every tear that falls from your eyes, this prayer will rise again, for it is a prayer of promise.

The God of all comfort will help you. He will be patient with your pain and its process. All through your long night, He will hold you close to His heart. He will lead you and teach you gently. And when morning finally comes, you will touch yourself with wonder and find that you are healed—and that you are helping other wounded ones. All this He will do because of His great compassion. And because He loves you with an everlasting love.

Amen.

"Why have you made me your target? . . . Why do you hide your face? . . . Why should I struggle in vain? . . . Why does the Almighty not set times for judgment? . . . Why then did you bring me out of the womb?"
—Job 7:20, 13:24, 9:29, 24:1, 10:18

I have often heard it said that people facing loss and pain should never ask why. At best, claim the critics, such questioning is counter-productive. At worst, it’s a sign we’re not trusting God.

Why do these people say such things? Perhaps they don’t understand the question. To cry out "Oh God, why?" is the natural response of a soul facing the terrible consequences of living in a sin-filled world. The knowledge that such agony was never part of God’s plan for us, and thus can never seem "right," bursts from our spirit in the form of a cry that inevitably begins with .

"Why am I alone now?"
"Why is my world falling apart?"
"Why have I been betrayed?"
"Why does God seem so far away when I need Him most?"
"Why did this innocent child have to suffer and die?"
"Why is life so full of pain?"

We cling to the knowledge that God has already won the victory over death. But physical—and often painful—death is still our passageway to receive the prize of eternal life and freedom from sin’s ravage.

How true that God plants seeds of hope within every thorny situation. Hope, however, does not remove life’s thorns and thistles. Even though we know that loss and separation cannot harm us eternally, the hurt on this earth can at times be almost unbearable.

No one understands this better than Jesus. After hanging on a cross for three hours in utter darkness, suspended by spikes through his hands and feet while the accumulated sins of humankind were heaped upon His bleeding back, our Lord cried out through parched and swollen lips, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

This couldn’t have been a real question from One Who had all wisdom and knowledge. He knew why. Together, He and the Father had built this terrifying moment of redemption into the foundation of the world! Yet His suffering, lonely spirit could not keep from crying out, "Why, God? Why? How can I bear this all alone?"

Through the tears of a loving Savior who knows the depths of what we suffer in ways we can never fathom, God hears our wrenching cries of "Oh God, why?"

His answers are being held tenderly in a nail-pierced hand.

"What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
—Romans 8:31–33

"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
—Romans 8:38–39

I found my little friend hiding in a corner of the living room, kicking at the bottom of an easy chair and biting his lower lip. Clearly he had sought this lonely spot to deal with distress heavier than a three-year-old boy knew how to carry.

Kneeling beside him, I touched his shoulder. "What’s the matter, Stevie?" I asked. "You seem so sad."

He turned toward the chair, covering his face with his hands, and I thought that this little one who laughed and hugged so easily was going to shut me out from his hurt. But then, with large, wet eyes, he turned and looked at me. "I’m mad with Mommy," he whispered, almost inaudibly.

"You’re angry with your mommy?"

"Yes. She keeps going away. She always goes away to the hospital to be with my sister ’cause Katy’s sick. But I don’t want her to." He drew in a deep, shaky breath. "It’s not good," he concluded. "It’s not good for Mommy!"

"No," I agreed gently, "and not good for Stevie either, is it?"

"No, not good for Stevie either," he admitted, and then he wept without restraint.

I gathered him into my arms, rocked him and kissed him, and whispered that I knew he felt so sad. I told him how special he was and how much his mommy missed him when she had to be away to help his baby sister get over her bad sickness.

It was then, as we snuggled together, that I found myself remembering the time, months earlier, when I had felt this way.

My precious friend had been sick with cancer, and I had been sick with a malignant sorrow at the thought of losing her. Wasn’t she God’s faithful, loving, and fruitful servant? Didn’t the world need her? And, oh, didn’t I need her?

So I, like Stevie, had withdrawn to a lonely spot, biting my lip for control, trying to hide my sadness, and trying to hide from God, for I was angry with my Lord. He had the power to prevent it—but hadn’t.

He found me, though, and then urged me—helped me—to cry out my rage, frustration, and indignation. At His gentle yet insistent probing, prayers too wounded to dress themselves in acceptable, respectable phrases whispered, "Unfair! Unfair!" And finally even the unspeakable was spoken—"Yes, I am angry with You!" I wept then, without restraint, feeling that He should strike me down.

As I cradled Stevie in my arms, I remembered that day and, with renewed awe, realized again that God is our Father of intimate, loving compassion. And such compassion never reacts; it responds . . . invites . . . enfolds . . . no matter what we’re feeling or trying to hide.

"Even now my witness is in heaven; my advocate is on high. My intercessor is my friend as my eyes pour out tears to God; on behalf of a man he pleads with God as a man pleads for his friend." —Job 16:19–21

"Therefore I will not keep silent; I will speak out in the anguish of my spirit, I will complain in the bitterness of my soul." —Job 7:11

I cry aloud to the LORD; I lift up my voice to the LORD for mercy. I pour out my complaint before him; before him I tell my trouble. —Psalm 142:1–2

When Life Takes What Matters Excerpts: Part 2

Home > Resources from Discovery House > When Life Takes What Matters > Part 1