Daily Devotional: Suffering & Lament: Why, God, Why

This is an opinion column.

THROUGH THE VALLEY

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?”
Psalm 22:1

REFLECTION

These are the words Jesus cried from the cross. Which means the most anguished question a human being can ask, the raw, desperate, world-ending why, has been spoken by the Son of God Himself. He did not just quote Psalm 22 as a theological statement. He felt it. In His body, in His spirit, in the moment of greatest darkness He had ever known, He cried out: Why have you forsaken me?

If you have ever asked that question, you are in remarkable company.

• Why did this happen to me?
• Why did God not prevent it?
• Why did the prayer go unanswered?
• Why did the person I love have to suffer?
• Why does it feel like heaven is silent exactly when I need it to speak most?

I guess that I am in remarkable company, because I found myself asking some of those whys myself in recent days and weeks. Those questions are not signs of failing faith. They are signs of real faith wrestling with real pain. The Psalms are full of them. Job asked them for thirty-seven chapters before God answered. Jeremiah asked them so persistently he was called the weeping prophet. Habakkuk opened his entire book with a complaint to God about what God was allowing to happen. God did not silence any of them. He engaged them. He answered them, not always with an explanation, but always with His presence.

The why question is honest. And God is not threatened by honesty. What He asks of us is not that we pretend we understand when we do not, or that we manufacture peace we do not feel. What He asks is that we bring the question to Him rather than turning away from Him because we do not have the answer. The difference between a faith that survives suffering and a faith that collapses under it is often not the presence or absence of doubt. It is the direction the doubt is taken. Toward God, or away from Him.

You can ask God why. You can ask it loudly, repeatedly, without a neat resolution at the end. And He will receive it. Because He is the God who asked it Himself, on a cross, in the darkest moment in human history. And three days later, the answer came. Not as an explanation, but as a resurrection.

What is the why question you have been carrying but have been afraid to ask God directly, and what would it mean to bring that question to Him honestly today, trusting that He is big enough to hold it?

PRAYER

God, we bring You our why today. The questions we have been carrying quietly, afraid to ask out loud because we thought they revealed a lack of faith. We ask them now. Why did this happen? Why has the prayer gone unanswered? Why does it feel like You are silent when we need You most? We do not know if we will receive a clear answer. But we bring the question to You rather than turning away from You because of it. You asked why from the cross. You understand what this feels like. Receive our questions. Stay close. And remind us that You are present even in the silence. Amen.