Sometimes I really want to write something, but tiredness and the rhythm of life means that words don’t quite come out. Today is one of those days, so instead of my random thoughts come a set of key quotes from two of my favourite authors that I have come back to at key moments of crisis through my life.
I don’t think it is any exaggeration to say that really grasping their truth will give us the realism we need to keep on trusting God in the midst of life’s difficulties and darkness. Both writers write in times of their own difficulties – but both draw out lessons that give us key wisdom for life.
We may be frankly bewildered at the things that happen to us, but God knows exactly what he is doing, and what he is after, in his handling of our affairs. Always, and in everything, he is wise; we shall see that hereafter, even where we never saw it here. Meanwhile we ought not to hesitate to trust his wisdom, even when he leaves us in the dark.
Knowing God: J I Packer p109 (the chapter titled ‘God only Wise’)
Then, speaking of Ecclesiastes:
The world we live in is in fact the sort of place he has described. The God who rules it hides himself. Rarely does this world look as if a beneficent Providence were running it. Rarely does it appear that there is a rational power behind it all. Often and often what is worthless survives, while what is valuable perishes. Be realistic, says the preacher; face these facts; see life as it is. You will have no true wisdom till you do.
Knowing God: J I Packer p118 (the chapter titled ‘God’s Wisdom and Ours’)
And then, one I have come back to time and again:
For the truth is that God in his wisdom, to make and keep us humble, and to teach us to walk by faith, has hidden from us almost everything we should like to know about the providential purposes which he is working out in the churches and in our own lives…
… We can be sure that the God who made this marvellously complex world-order, and who compassed the great redemption from Egypt, and who later compassed the even greater redemption from sin and Satan, knows what he is doing and ‘doeth all things well’, even if for the moment he hides his hand. We can trust him and rejoice in him, even when we cannot discern his path.
Knowing God: J I Packer p118-119 (same chapter)
Or if you prefer a different style, the same truth is expressed by OT theologian John Goldingay in his excellent reflections in “Walk On” discussing calamity and the book of Job in the context of his experience of caring for and walking with his wife Ann’s experience of MS:
Job himself never knows about chapter 1 and 2 of “his” book. So he goes through pain the same way we do. And he illustrates how the fact that we do not know what might explain our suffering, what purpose God might have in it, does not constitute the slightest suggestion that suffering has no explanation. After all Job could never have dreamt of the explanation of what happened to him.
I cannot imagine the story that makes it okay for God to have made Ann go through what she has been through. But I can imagine that there is such a story. I do not know whether we will ever know what the story is.
John Goldingay – Walk On p32 (“Calamity”)
And the last word in relation to that goes to Rich Mullins who I think was right when he sang “And I know that it would not hurt any less, even if it could be explained”.
Joshua's Tree 