Where is God When We are Hurting?

Yesterday, I capped off an amazing afternoon in a horrible fashion. I came home to find our 13-year old Dachshund, Scooter lying dead at the end of our neighbor's driveway. The little guy who never wandered from the house had gotten too far from home and I assume was hit by some idiot teenager who thought it would be cool to run over my dog. This really brought to the surface some things I had been mulling on for the last few weeks about life's pain and victory and their relationships to God.

A couple of weeks ago I was visiting with my cousin about how sometimes it seems like God strings us along. He had a successful career as a construction foreman for a very large homebuilder in one of the fastest-growing areas in the country. When the housing market fell out a couple of years ago, he was laid off and has spent the majority of his recent months trying to begin a new career, which finally happened a few weeks ago. He asked me how I was doing, and I said I was "feasting on the riches of his grace," a line from the hymn "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Sweetest Name I Know." You see, for the last year, my wife and I had been battling health problems, and financial problems but a few weeks prior, we had a breakthrough and God opened up a door for Cindy to use her talents, abilities, and life story, to share the love of Christ to women in crisis pregnancies and to be able to get paid for it. In the wave of highs and lows that life brings, we were riding the crest of a big one.

But yesterday, when I saw our "little man" lying in the road, it all came crashing down. And I remembered my conversation with Ken. We discussed why God seems to come through in his time, not ours. What we realized is that God designed us for a relationship with Him. He is a relational God, even in relationship with himself between Father, Son, and Spirit. He extends that relationship to us. When life is fine and dandy, our human nature kicks in and while we may give lip service to our dependence on God, often times we are not truly dependent on him, because we feel like we are self sustaining. But it is in our times of tremendous need, and deep pain, that we remember there is one greater than us who loved us enough to die for us.

Philippians 4:6-7 is one of my favorite passages. This passage says that we shouldn't be anxious about anything, but through prayer, we should present our requests to God with thanksgiving. Then the peace that passes all understanding will guard our hearts. That means when we depend on God, he gives us peace that we can't understand. That is the peace I have today in spite of my hurt. Psalm 55:22 says, "Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall." I Peter 5:7 also says, "Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you." Since God included this in the Old and New Testaments, maybe he was trying to tell us something.

I don't know where you are today. But if you are hurting, just know that God loves you. He hurts when you hurt. And the only thing he wants more than to make your hurt go away is for you to grow closer to him through the hurt. That's why redemption is better than healing. When Jesus healed the 10 men with leprosy in Luke 17, all of them were healed. But only one used that experience to draw closer to God. Ten were healed, but only one was redeemed. Remember that when we hurt, it's not always about healing, but about redemption.

The Smile of God

I've always been hesitant to quote cliches...especially those that aren't found in Scripture. One of these catch phrases is "The Lord works in mysterious ways." I guess this kind of coincides with the opening passage in the book of James, "2Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." What? Consider it joy when we face trials? Are you sadistic or something? How in the world are we supposed to be happy about trials?

Last week we had one such "trial". At a regularly-scheduled doctor's appointment, Cindy and I found out that we had lost our baby some time during the last few weeks since our previous visit to the doctor. After having heard the heartbeat and seeing the ultra-sound and putting the ultra-sound picture up on the refrigerator, now all our hopes and dreams just came crashing down. This was our second miscarriage in the last 18 months, so we just had a lot of questions.

Well, the Lord is all about timing. You see, we had been planning to take a vacation on Friday, but found out on Tuesday that we had lost the baby and that Cindy would have to have a procedure on Wednesday to extract the baby and the tissue. "What in the world was God doing?", I thought. So we weren't even sure at this point if we'd get to go on our much-needed vacation. Well, long story short, we did get to go and had a wonderful time. It was as if God had his hand on us the whole time we were gone. Let me show you what I mean.

Because of our changing plans, we did not book a hotel room until the day we left. The picture above is our room in the Adolphus Hotel in downtown Dallas. Friday morning, we booked the Adolphus (a historic hotel where each of the last 15 presidents has stayed and goes for $350-$500 a night) for three nights at $65 a night. Using some vouchers I had gotten for taking our youth group to a Ranger game, we paid $6 for a child's ticket and parked for $5 because it was a Friday game. That's an $11 Ranger game not counting food. We also took in a day at the Dallas World Aquarium, Ft. Worth Zoo, Ice Age 3 at the historic Inwood Theater and a day at Splash Kingdom water park in Canton, TX. Thanks to some gift cards we had, we also ate at Texas Roadhouse for $13.

Our much-needed vacation was like a big hug from God saying to us, "It's going to be all right." It takes faith to see that God is doing things. I didn't realize what was going on until we pulled up to the hotel and realized what a swanky joint it was. But God is good and he gave us a precious gift by allowing us to enjoy the blessings we DO have. So, yes, the Lord does work in mysterious ways!