Four centimeters. How could four tiny centimeters make so much difference—cause so much suffering?
How could four marks on a metric tape so profoundly punish a family, strain a marriage, and call into question the very goodness of God?
“Your daughter has a condition called microcephaly,” said the doctor. “Her head should have a circumference of thirty-five centimeters—but it measures only thirty-one.”
For several days, Susan sat in the hospital pondering the ominous words. For now, nothing was sure. Mandy might lead a happy, normal life after all. But the uncertainty was cruel, almost intolerable. Marshall, her husband, was out of town. How could he be away at a time like this—a time when doctors were using words like disability and severe?
For weeks the Shelleys prayed intensely, desperately, unceasingly. Countless friends joined them in prayer. Marshall was the editor of a successful Christian magazine, and he was known and loved by many. But God didn’t seem to be offering special favors to Christian editors; the weeks only confirmed everyone’s deepest fears. The Shelleys’ third child, it seemed, would never walk or talk, sit up, or even recognize her caregivers. Her life would be defined by seizures, rounds of hospitalization, and an infinite array of medications.
At the age of three months, cataracts were detected in Mandy’s eyes. There was corrective surgery, but did it really matter? Susan couldn’t be certain her daughter ever saw her face—or heard her voice, for that matter. Family life was totally dominated by care for the suffering and unresponsive child; it was an open-ended emergency, a crisis never resolved. Eight hours were often required simply to feed Mandy. Late-night hospital trips were routine.
Meanwhile, the tension only grew thicker between husband and wife. Where was God? He’s more than welcome to show up—any time now would be fine, thought Marshall and Susan.
It was just then, in the midst of caring for Mandy, that the surprise came. Susan was pregnant again. Here, finally, was a ray of sunshine—a message that God approved of their strong faith in hard times. And the child would be their first boy.
In the fifth month, Susan went to see the doctor for an ultrasound. He brought this report: “The fetus has a malformed heart. The aorta is attached incorrectly. There are missing portions of the cerebellum. Clubfoot, cleft palate, and perhaps a cleft lip. Possibly spina bifida . . . This is a condition incompatible with life.” The little boy was likely to spontaneously miscarry, but in any case he wouldn’t survive long outside the womb. The doctor suggested a “termination,” but Susan, still honoring God as the giver and taker of life, carried the child to term. The only time she would have for getting to know her little boy, she reflected, might well be a few short weeks in the womb.
The Shelleys turned their prayers to survival and healing for the child. Again, the community of faith encircled them with intercession and support. The little boy was born, took a deep breath, and turned blue. Two minutes after he entered the world, he quietly departed it again. His name was Toby, from the biblical Tobiah, which means “God is good.” That wasn’t how the family felt, but it was still what they believed.
In a few months, Mandy followed her tiny brother into the next world, and she was buried beside him; two tiny coffins, two graves, two aching losses.
Susan grieved bitterly for her double loss; her prayers were angry and accusing. If God couldn’t take any better care of His children here on earth, how could she know they were better off now? People offered all the usual pat answers about God’s allowance of suffering; none of these lines were good enough. Susan needed something for her soul. For three nights she lay awake, pleading for a simple thing: some assurance that Mandy and Toby were safe, whole, and cared for.
Just a simple answer would be enough; just a gesture from the Hand that was supposed to offer love; then perhaps she could let go. Susan prayed. And even more, she listened—listened through the silence.
Perhaps it’s the defining question for our species: Why? Of all God’s creatures, we are the only ones who seek to understand, to secure the reason and the rationale. Humanity will go to great lengths simply to find meaning. We challenge the atom; we push into space. But that meaning can be elusive. More essential questions haunt us: Where is the child I’ve lost? Why am I here? What is the significance of my life? What would have happened if I’d chosen the other road—of marriage, of career, of faith?
When the answers elude our grasp and the void ignores our questions, we suffer a kind of spiritual vertigo we call doubt. Suddenly all the assumptions on which we’ve built a life, large and small, are like a toothpick replica of the Eiffel Tower—pull out one support and, if it’s close enough to the foundation, the whole structure topples. The world turns upside down. Every belief we have is threatened.
For most of us, it’s in the aftermath of pain and shock that the questions come. Why, Lord? Why?
That word cruelly haunted the mother of Glenn Chambers. On February 15, 1947, that young man was waiting to board a DC-4 bound for Quito, Ecuador. Glenn was off to make his dreams come true; he was enlisting as a missionary through an organization called the Voice of the Andes. He had a few extra minutes before takeoff, so he looked for a scrap of paper on which to write a note to his mother. Then his plane disappeared into the clouds, never to emerge. It crashed into the peak of El Tablazo, near Bogotá. Consumed by flames, it hurtled from the skies into a ravine fourteen thousand feet below. The unthinkable news came to his mother—followed, a few days later, by his final note. He had scribbled it on the corner of an advertisement that happened to be dominated by one towering word: Why?
The word mocked and haunted the mother of Glenn Chambers. Here were his last known words, seemingly from beyond the grave. They were filled with cheer, ignoring those looming letters, black and blaring, that asked the unanswerable. The same letters stand poised in the backdrop of our own lives. We can’t ignore them forever. Inevitably we must doubt.
The Greek words for doubt carry the idea of uncertainty. They have the connotation of being unsettled, of lacking a firm conviction. Doubt is not the opposite of faith but the opportunity of faith—the growing pains of an eager, seeking spirit. The true enemy of faith is unbelief, but doubt is a necessary leg of the journey. It stands at the edge of past understandings and stretches painfully for new frontiers.
To doubt, then, is to be human. We read the Bible and find doubters at every turn, even among the greatest of men—David, Job, Solomon, Jeremiah. In the New Testament we quickly come to the man known as John the Baptist, who demanded faith from his followers. He proclaimed answers in ringing oratories, but he also asked his share of questions. As he sat behind bars, under the arrest of King Herod, he found himself pondering deeply and darkly. He sent his men to Jesus with a question: “Are you the coming One, or do we look for another?”
John had been in the wilderness preaching his heart out, proclaiming the coming of the Deliverer. Jesus described him as the greatest “among those born of women”—quite an endorsement (Matthew 11:11). It had been a short time since John had baptized Jesus. It was a moment of supernatural power, and John heard the voice of God affirming Jesus as the Christ. But now, away from the crowds and the river baptisms, within the darkness of a prison cell, nothing seemed the same. The tables were turned, and John couldn’t help but ask the question straight out: Are You the real thing, or will all our hopes and dreams be shattered once again?
If it could happen to the greatest man born of women, then none of us are exempt. Doubts are inevitable for the weak and the wise.
I was raised in a wonderful home by believing parents, but I grappled with my share of doubts through my adolescent years. As a matter of fact, doubts are basically guaranteed in Christian homes. The essentials of the faith are so ingrained, so taken for granted, that we must test them before making them our own.
No, the questioning spirit is not sinful, but simply a rite of passage we must all pass through as we grow into a deeper faith. God understands. He’s far more pleased when we ask the questions and challenge the assumptions than when we accept, secondhand and prefabricated, the faith of our parents. That’s not a living, breathing faith at all, but an heirloom to display in some corner of the living room with the other antiques. Your Father wants you to work out your salvation with fear, trembling, confrontation, tears, and whatever else might be required to nurture an authentic personal friendship with the living God.
Most of us need to reinstate that word doubt as a friend, not an enemy. But there’s another word we need to examine: unbelief. We might say that doubt asks questions; unbelief refuses to hear answers. The former is hard miles on a good journey; the latter is the dead end, a refusal to travel any farther.
John 20 brings us into the presence of history’s most notorious doubter. His name was Thomas. The Bible often refers to him as Thomas Didymus. Many people assume the meaning is “Thomas the Doubter,” but actually it means “Thomas the Twin.” Didymus travels down through the years and comes to us in the English language as ditto—double. We have no idea what happened to Thomas’s twin, but we know he was often “in two minds,” which is one definition of doubt.
He was the classic skeptic, adamantly unwilling to accept anything on simple hearsay—not without a razor-sharp question or two. Perhaps in our time he would be a lawyer. But there was a touch of melancholy about Thomas as well, a bit of the pessimist. You and I may not have placed him on the short list for Jesus’ executive cabinet, but the Lord selected Thomas as one of His closest friends. Perhaps He needed a tough-minded disciple, as all our organizations do.
I wish we had time to review all the references to Thomas in the Gospels. One will have to suffice. It was that unforgettable evening when Jesus and His followers met in the upper room for their final meal, recorded in John 14:4–5. Jesus was gently preparing His disciples for the suffering and tragedy to come, and He said, in essence, “You know where I must go, and you know how it must happen.”
Thomas was the first with a reply, which we might paraphrase as, “Lord, we have no idea where You’re going. How would we know something like that?” Skeptics don’t buy into subtlety and elliptical references. They’re lovers of straight talk, clear words, and hard answers.
That’s the Thomas of Scripture—practical, skeptical, taking nothing for granted, but not unbelieving. Thomas went everywhere the Twelve went. He saw and felt and heard all the miraculous events. He knew who could walk on water, who could raise a dead friend, who controlled the very winds of the storm. Surely the life of Thomas had been transformed along with the rest. But still he doubted. We can have faith, see miracles, and still have questions. As a matter of fact, the thinking believer will only have his questions increased when the miracles flow.
The defining moment in Thomas’s life is found in John 20. For Peter, that moment came at a fish fry, when Jesus forgave him and sent him out to change the world. But for Thomas it happened here, in the room where the disciples had huddled together—the room that was entered in fear and departed in faith. This is the room where doubt was overcome and skepticism was left in awe.
Let’s enter that room now and learn the timeless secrets of doubt and belief so that we can keep the faith even in our most discouraging of seasons.
John 20:24 gives us the key to the passage: Thomas had missed the fireworks. Jesus had appeared in the midst of His friends, shown His wounds, and pointed toward the future. Great joy and celebration had broken out in that room. Jesus alive? Could it be true? Yes, for He was right there in the flesh—but Thomas was not, and this is a significant point.
Ten men gathered together in the custom of the bereaved. When someone near to us dies, we rendezvous at someone’s home; we bring food and gentle laughter and words of consolation. Solitude isn’t recommended, for we need the encouragement available in the intermingling of our spirits. But Thomas, independent thinker that he was, had drawn apart and missed not only the consolation but also the miracle.
Doubt flourishes in the dark. It’s a bit like those mushrooms that grow in damp cellars. It thrives on the cold, dank loneliness of the human spirit. In solitude, the questions seem larger, more ominous, more hopeless. Where was John the Baptist when he began to question the very content of all of his own preaching? He was in a dark cell, away from the throng, there in the dungeon where the mushrooms grew. Darkness feeds doubt; daylight has a way of dispelling the worst of it.
That’s why doubt is a wise occasion for examining our feelings. Sometimes our questions have less to do with theological enigmas than with a simple case of the blues. Our souls and our bodies live in such close company that they tend to catch each other’s diseases. Physical illness dampens the soul, and emotional depression causes bodily fatigue. C. S. Lewis admitted to struggling with doubt when he was on the road in some inn or strange bed. He loved his home and his circle of friends, and absence often brought on a fit of soul vertigo for him.
Stay connected to people and you’re more likely to stay connected to your faith.
True doubt never turns away from the facts, wherever they may lead. It stubbornly pursues the truth. It’s Galileo questioning that the world is flat; Chuck Yeager insisting the sound barrier is no barrier at all; Thomas requiring a handling of the evidence.
So he said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.”
—John 20:25
Consider the doubter’s perspective. When Jesus had drawn up the group itinerary, Thomas had spoken against going to Jerusalem. As he saw things, it was simply too dangerous a place to visit—Jesus would die, and perhaps the disciples would die with Him. Sure enough, his direst predictions for Jesus had come true. If only they had listened to Thomas, master of the worst-case scenario. Skeptics draw a melancholy satisfaction from the words “I told you so.”
Now, when the disciples were elbowing one another out of the way, shouting over one another to tell Thomas the incredible news (for we all love trumping the pessimist), how did Thomas respond? Just exactly as we’d expect—he recited the Skeptic’s Creed. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” he said. “As a matter of fact, scratch that—I’ll believe it when I feel it. You’ll forgive me for not taking your word for it. I’ll make my own evaluation, if it’s all the same to you.”
Just as we love chastising Peter for failing to walk on water—regardless of whether we would have stepped out of the boat—we’re all too ready to condemn Thomas simply because he insisted on validation. At least he was honest; he called it as he saw it. He never called the disciples’ claims impossible; he never ruled out miracles. He simply wanted to test the evidence personally.
As we’ll see, Jesus met Thomas at the point of his questions. Ask God with an honest heart, and He’ll always answer you.
Scene: the same room, but eight days later. For more than a week, the issue had separated Thomas and his friends. Had they witnessed the greatest event in history, or had they been cruelly deceived?
It’s significant that Thomas, despite his reservation, had lingered among them. Here again is the difference between doubt and unbelief. Doubt says, “I’ll stay and investigate.” Unbelief stalks away and says, “Sure, you guys go on believing whatever you want. I’m out of here.” Thomas stayed to ask the questions—and therefore received the answers.
And after eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, “Peace to you!”
—John 20:26
Christianity ultimately comes down to something more than theological questions. In the end it’s all about a Person, not a proposition. The questions are the beginning of the journey, but the answer comes finally in experience, in reaching out to touch and to feel and in being ourselves touched by the power of the nail-scarred hands. This is the experience of Thomas, who asked the right questions and whose doubts kept him among the community of faith and guided him across the room to the presence of the Savior.
The questions remain, of course. I’m sure if we could talk to the disciples, they wouldn’t be able to fully explain the mysteries of Jesus’ resurrection body that day—one that could move through walls even while displaying the scars of physical execution. After a while, such questions are moot. In the radiance of a Man fresh from conquering death, we’re struck speechless, and we forget to ask about the little things. Too often we become ensnared in some element of doctrinal minutiae, forgetting the miracles that transcend the details.
I suspect that if Peter or John wandered by and caught a snatch of our arguments, they might say, “What’s the point? Jesus descended to hell, broke the chains, and destroyed the power of death. Why the trivial pursuit in the living presence of Jesus?”
Consider this: In the years to come, which disciple had the most definitive testimony of all? Who else plunged his hand into the jagged rift where the spear had been thrust? Who else ran a trembling finger along the slope of the wrists, where the nails had sliced through and splintered the wood? Who else would carry within his fingertips, for the rest of his life, the tactile memory of a resurrected body?
Only the doubter. Only Thomas.
Then He said to Thomas, “Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.”
—John 20:27
“But Peter,” someone may have said, “your eyes played tricks on you.”
“Don’t you understand, John?” another might have offered. “We see what we long to see.”
But Thomas knew, for his eyes and his hands offered consistent accounts. The Man before him was the friend he’d loved as a brother, the companion whose death was a matter of hard fact.
Assurance is the reward of the insistent seeker, and Jesus affirmed it on a separate postresurrection appearance.
And He said to them, “Why are you troubled? And why do doubts arise in your hearts? Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.” When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet.
—Luke 24:38–40
Read those words well, for Jesus looks beyond the page and into your eyes, and He makes you the same offer. “Are you unsure? Reach in and feel for yourself.” And with that, He shows you His hands and His feet—if you’ll only reach out and touch.
Jacob was brash enough to wrestle an angel, and the angel wrestled back; God is big enough to handle the questions that trouble you. Just be honest about your doubts. The Bible doesn’t affirm those doubts you keep in the box on the shelf, unused, unexamined, that you bring out whenever someone invites you to church. Doubts, useless in and of themselves, are useful when they lead us somewhere.
I commend whoever said that we should believe our beliefs and doubt our doubts. That may sound trite to you, but I find a certain amount of wisdom in that phrase. Repressed doubt, stuck away in the closet, can become a devil’s wedge. It’s like the letter from the IRS that you’re afraid to open. After a while, the emotional weight exceeds whatever peril the envelope could possibly hold.
Don’t block out your doubts, but examine them well; turn them around in your mind; discuss them with wise and patient friends. Have the courage of your (struggling) convictions. God has somehow outlasted thousands of years of champion doubters, lined up to ask their stumpers; He hasn’t heard one yet that He can’t answer, and yours probably won’t knock Him from His heavenly throne either. But if you hide it under the rug or in the closet with that IRS letter, it will lurk at the back of your mind and breed a whole family of doubts. It will collect interest until it bankrupts your faith.
Don’t let that happen. Bring it out into the light and “doubt it out.”
When you get a question mark all straightened out, what do you have? An exclamation point, of course! Honest questions lead to powerful declarations.
And Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!”
—John 20:28
It’s very difficult for me to read this passage without feeling powerful emotion. It’s one of the supreme turning points in all Scripture—perhaps the first ringing declaration of the resurrection’s transforming power upon an individual life. The most powerful courtroom testimony is that of a hostile witness. Thomas the skeptic replaces his questions with an exclamation: my Lord and my God!
I know we’d all like to have been there to see the wonder and worship shining from his eyes. I know we would join him in falling on our knees to worship the conquering King.
Thankfully, we have plenty of opportunity to keep the faith in the midst of our own doubts.
Confront your doubts head-on, as Thomas did. But you’ll want to handle them carefully. Let’s discover how you can disarm them.
Has this ever happened to you? Sliding into a pew, late for church, you feel tired, edgy, and possibly coming down with a cold. Across the sanctuary, people are standing and testifying: “I won five more souls to the kingdom of God,” somebody says. “And I bet some of you have won more souls than that! I don’t know about you, but I feel God’s sweet presence every moment of every day.” Everyone around you is laughing, applauding, and saying, “Amen!”
Won five souls to the Lord? You can’t even enter the church parking lot without honking your horn at someone who got your space. You’d like to stand up and give your testimony. “Hello, everybody. Let me tell you about my week. I haven’t felt anything but a lousy sinus headache and a bushel of doubts. I haven’t had the sense of God in my life for a long time. I’m barely getting by at work, my family life is in chaos, and to be absolutely honest with you, I haven’t seen God doing much of anything.” Then you would sit down, knowing not to expect many amens—just the kind of awed stares usually reserved for gorillas at the zoo; perhaps the same glances that Thomas got in that disciple-filled room.
But it would be far better for you to stand up and spill it in public than to smother your tangled emotions in sanitary smiles for months and years. If you’re going to make it through the bad times and finally encounter the true goodness of God, you must begin with honesty. You must admit to yourself that it’s not well with your soul.
You can’t get by with a simple, “Oh, I’m just a natural-born doubter, I guess.” No, you’re going to have to do better than that. You’re going to have to crystallize your thinking and put your finger on precisely what it is that’s causing your uncertainty. The nameless doubt is the one you’ll harbor. Identify it, describe it clearly, and deal with it.
Are you struggling with the historicity of the resurrection? We have excellent source material to recommend. Are you grappling with the problem of evil? Great minds have grappled before you—and they’re willing to share their thoughts. Are you wondering if one brand of faith is any different from another? Make a brand comparison.
Articulate what you doubt and why you doubt. What brought this on? What is threatening to knock your world upside down? Was it something someone said, perhaps some scholar or skeptic? Is there something amiss in the realm of your emotions? Clarify these issues; wipe the clouds away.
Christian writer Mark Littleton found a simple formula I like. It goes this way:
Turn your doubts to questions.
Turn your questions to prayers.
Turn your prayers to God.1
You mean we can take our doubts directly to God? Won’t He be offended? Not according to scriptural precedent.
Consider the case of Gideon:
And the Angel of the LORD appeared to him, and said to him, “The LORD is with you, you mighty man of valor!” Gideon said to Him, “O my lord, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, ‘Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the LORD has forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.”
—Judges 6:12–13
Gideon’s doubts surfaced in the very presence of an angel. The angel testified that God was present, but Gideon was bold enough to say, “You’ve got to be kidding me! If God is with us, why has our land been taken over by criminal gangs? If God is with us, where are all these miracles our grandparents were always going on about? From where I’m standing, it looks like God has gone over to the Midianite side.”
It must have gotten God’s attention because the next voice we hear is not identified as the angel’s—the text tells us that God replied personally to Gideon. He can handle our frustration and our questions.
Sarah, the matriarch of the chosen people, had a bit of the same abrasive edge. God promised a child, then seemed to forget all about it for decades. Who could blame Sarah for becoming a little on the testy side? She was pushing one hundred. At any rate, she had not only her doubts but also a good laugh in the bargain. In the face of God’s promises, she laughed, not realizing that God was present—as, of course, He always is.
If Sarah could laugh, Jeremiah could cry. You may not have read Lamentations for a while, but the “weeping prophet” came head-on at God with tough questions. And God answered them every time.
David, in the psalms, often pointed an angry finger at God and accused Him of desertion.
Job was a man of the widest faith, but he sometimes flirted with the deepest doubts.
The Bible’s best and brightest weren’t heroes for their lack of doubts; they were heroes for confronting and conquering them.
Why won’t we confront our doubts? Because deep down, we’re afraid the doubts will win. We think Christianity is somehow weaker than its accusers.
Young people buy into the notion that Darwinian evolution must be a proven commodity, just because the mainstream academic community proclaims it so. But I’ve watched as creationists and evolutionists debated the issues—and I’ve never seen the evolutionists win. Few people stop to realize that the theory of evolution is, as theories go, “the new kid on the block”—it has only a century of acceptance under its belt. The idea of a world created by God has always been with us. Our fundamental doctrines provide a strong foundation, built to last not simply through time but for eternity.
The biblical propositions will be here when all the trendy theories of the day have passed away. In the nineteenth century, Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed, “God is dead.” Two hundred years later, God proclaims that Friedrich Nietzsche is dead. That’s the way it goes. You don’t find flaws in the Word of God; it finds flaws in you.
A lawyer by the name of Frank Morison set out to debunk the crazy idea of Jesus’ resurrection once and for all. He examined the historical evidence with all his legal logic and evidential expertise. Morison sifted through every possibility that might account for the disappearance of Jesus’ body—and was left with the biblical explanation. In the end, he wrote a book called Who Moved the Stone? The only thing it debunked was his skepticism. His book has become the classic apologetic text for the historical resurrection of Jesus Christ. Like Thomas the doubter, Morison brought honest questions and a willingness to investigate. And God moved the stone that was in Morison’s heart.
There’s one other thing we must account for—the limitations of dealing with doubt. In the end, some mysteries linger. If it weren’t so, we’d be left with no holiness, no God of transcendence. Faith must ultimately encompass its own degree of mystery.
I blush to admit this, but the older I get and the more I learn, the more I become aware of my own ignorance. Just when I think I’m pretty smart, I look a little closer and discover the limitations of my knowledge. All I have to do is tune in to the Discovery Channel, read the latest on the world of science, or listen to some of the sharp, cyber-slick young people in our church—and I’m quickly and hopelessly left in the dust. That’s when I discover I’m an old-fashioned abacus in a computerized world—and if you don’t know what an abacus is, I’m probably just showing my age all the more.
In the face of my limitless limitations, all I can do is bow in humility before our awesome God and say, “Lord, You know my deficiency. You know the limited capacity of the hard drive You wired within me. Help me understand that I’ll never have all the answers.”
I may be venturing where angels fear to tread here. This is a sensitive topic, and I hope you’ll read this section carefully before firing off an angry letter.
I accept the Bible as the inspired Word of God, and I regard every word as true, from the opening of one cover to the closing of the other. You can put me down with the crowd that holds out for plenary verbal inspiration, and I’m proud to take my stand among them. The Bible is my full and total authority.
God’s Word has every shred of truth we need for our lives in this world, but it doesn’t take on every question. There are many issues that God didn’t see fit to cover in His Word. What we are given is our spiritual meat and living water, the daily minimum requirements for the children of God. Side issues must wait for another day.
Sometimes we face difficult questions. People come to me and ask, “What does the Bible say about this?” We need to accept the fact that, occasionally, the Bible opts for silence. God has an answer, but we must trust the Spirit and our own sound mind as we make our decisions.
The more we learn about this world, the more complexity we discover. Our great-grandparents knew nothing of molecules, of atoms, of whirling electrons. Our children will delve even deeper into wonders as yet unfound. And on the other end, we knew space was infinite—but somehow it seems to keep growing as we learn more.
Today it’s possible for astronomers to look through a telescope and see incredible distances across the galaxy—and we’re told that their range is only the equivalent of a wet thimble at the edge of an ocean, so vast is our universe. Realizing the rich detail of the microscopic world, and the infinity of the telescopic world, we come to a deeper appreciation of the majesty of God. Finally, in humility, we’re content to know that our minds are too small to encompass the wonder of it all.
Therefore we’ll have those moments when we look into the stars with our questions and realize the simple answer is that there is no simple answer. We are finite, physical beings with spirits prone to stretch toward the infinite. We seek to know Him. We seek to understand His universe. We seek the answers to all that we see and touch, within and without. But for now we must rest in the sufficiency of what is given. Someday, in a better place, all questions will be accounted for, all tears will be dried, and all doubts will be finally laid to rest.
But for now, we can join hands with Paul to embrace the infinite:
Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!
“For who has known the mind of the LORD?
Or who has become His counselor?”
“Or who has first given to Him
And it shall be repaid to him?”
For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever.
—Romans 11:33–36
Or we can stand with Isaiah and hear God’s gentle disclaimer:
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”
—Isaiah 55:8–9
We’ll never have a handle on the nature of God. We’ll never find the box that will confine Him. Be thankful we have room for worship, to stretch toward something so much greater than ourselves. What a terrifying world this would be if we human beings, with all our violence and foolishness, represented the highest authority and the wisest counsel this universe had to offer. Instead we’re free to be children, happily deferring to a Father who will take care of everything. If need be, we can bring Him our questions and be certain of receiving, if not precisely the answers we expected, then certainly the answers we truly needed all along.
Susan Shelley, who watched two of her children slip away, kept pounding on the doors of heaven, demanding some reply. For three consecutive nights she asked God for some assurance that her little ones had found comfort and caring. On the third night, as she was asking God again, she heard the sound of little footsteps in the hallway. Her two daughters, seven and four, often came and crawled into bed with their parents. But this time the footsteps came to the doorway and stopped—then receded back down the hall.
The next morning, Palm Sunday, Susan found it difficult to awaken Stacey, the older of the two. Stacey was too sleepy. Her mother asked, “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about a midnight wanderer who came to the door of our bedroom last night, would you?”
“Oh yes,” said Stacey, perking up. “That was me. I came to your room to tell you that God spoke to me, but you were asleep. So I went back to bed.”
Susan wanted to know what God had said.
“He said that Mandy and Toby are very busy, that they are preparing our house, and that they are guarding His throne.”
A little chill ran down Susan’s spine. “How did God say these things?”
“He spoke to my mind,” said Stacey simply. “Then when I thought you were asleep I came back to my bed and repeated the words over and over so I could remember to tell you. It seemed like an important message.”
Susan didn’t know what to think. Was this the answer to her prayer? Could God really have spoken through a seven-year-old? That, of course, is yet another question; we never come to the end of them. All that matters is that Susan, from then on, felt no more worries for her two lost little ones. From the mouth of a babe had come words of reassurance and blessing, consistent with all the Bible tells us of the next world. Her children were busy! They were guarding the throne! And they were preparing that place where the family would one day be reunited in wholeness and joy.
The grief wasn’t dissipated, of course, and the “why” questions endured. But what God supplied was enough—more than enough. With the strength that proceeds from such wisdom, Marshall and Susan dared to keep enlarging their family. A year after Mandy’s death they welcomed a little boy into the world. They named the little one Bayly, after a wise Christian well acquainted with grief. He is well; the whole family is well and happy.
Pain lingers in this life, for the Shelleys as for all of us; questions never end, and the race seems long. But God is good. We tell Him what we want, and He gives us what we need. In the end, we can only stand with Thomas, reaching out to handle for ourselves the impenetrable mystery, and whisper,
“MY LORD AND MY GOD!”