The Futility of "why?"

This week has to rank up there with some of the least enjoyable in my life. For one thing, along with many baby boomers I watch appalled as the stock market summarily dispenses with a sizeable chunk of my retirement nest egg. More importantly, I watch helplessly as a dear friend prepares to fight the battle of her life against an aggressive cancer that if unchecked would certainly devour her.

In the case of the former disappointment, my natural reaction has been to whine and apportion blame wherever, but in the latter I know not what to say. It is all too overwhelming. There are no words in the natural that can shrink the threat, no comforting clichés that can calm the fears. I have no idea how atheists come to terms with this magnitude of difficulty. I do know my God and I know that He is good all the time. We don’t understand why, and we will probably never know why some people have to walk through such hardship, but that’s no reason to doubt his character or his love and concern for us. Gotta keep trusting Him. In situations like this, there is nothing else.

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 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 8:35-39 (NIV)
Image: Yad Vashem, Israel