Questions?

 

Someone recently reminded me that I once said in a sermon that sometimes we ask the wrong questions.  Her reminder had a context – a tragedy had taken place that had caused immense pain and difficulty for her and her family.  And isn’t that precisely the moment when serious questions arise in our minds?  I recall a grandfather who lost three grandchildren in as many years.  At the funeral of the third one he asked the question: “Why didn’t the Lord take me instead?”  He even preceded that question with a lament, “Lord, you took the wrong one!”

Okay, I’m sure the Lord God doesn’t mind us asking our questions.  Did not even Jesus ask that probing and desperate question: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” - an agonising question from the depths of hell.  Isn’t that perfectly understandable?  Understandable... not only when Jesus cries that out from a cross of crucifixion on a hill called Calvary... but also when King David, cried that question out to heaven in Psalm 22.  Interesting isn’t it?  The one who inspired David to write that agonising question in Psalm 22 quoted that very same question from the cross and so gave the question a greater depth – something that went far beyond David’s problem of being persecuted by King Saul and by his own son Absalom.  Many have asked that same question when God seemed a long way away.

If you ever wonder about the legitimacy of asking questions of God, just read the Psalms.  These song-writers were not shy about asking God tough questions.  Psalm 10 begins with two such questions: “Why, O LORD, do you stand far off?  Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?“  Or there’s Psalm 44: “Awake, O Lord!  Why do you sleep?  Rouse yourself!  Do not reject us forever.  Why do you hide your face and forget our misery and oppression?”

The Bible writers certainly know how to lament... and they do it often.  Listen, for example, to Jeremiah in the book of Lamentations: “Why do you always forget us?  Why do you forsake us so long?”  But here the questions are not the same as some we hear at times in the workshop or in the office.  I recall a man who claimed to be an atheist who challenged me by asking why the God I believed in allowed terrible things to happen.  That just proves we can ask our questions out of unbelief.  But that’s not the case with Jeremiah.  That prophet asks his questions of God only after expressing his trust in God’s sovereign rule and authority over this universe: “You, O LORD, reign forever; your throne endures from generation to generation.” (Lamentations 5:19).

Perhaps these tough questions are often asked by believers simply because the ways of God are so inscrutable.  As the hymn-writer put it, “God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.”  And when we then try to make sense out of those ‘mysterious ways’ then our curiosity and pain drives us to come with our questions.

Having said all that we do need to admit that too often our questions arise out of sense of unfairness... as if we’ve been hard done by.  There are also our rebellious questions; when we think we deserve better than what we presently have to endure.  It’s those questions I particularly had in mind when I suggested that so often we ask the wrong questions.  Instead of asking, “Why me, Lord?” we should instead ask, “Why not me Lord?”  The point is: do we ask our ‘Why?’ questions because we believe God should grant us an exemption from the normal problems of daily life?  We all live in a fallen and messed up world and God has nowhere promised us a trouble free life.

It’s only when we know who God is and trust His wisdom, power and love that our questions dissolve.  I recall reading a story set in the Netherlands during the devastating North Sea Floods of 1953 when, with a combination of storms and high tides, the North Sea broke through the dikes.  There were scenes of utter devastation and some 1800 people lost their lives.  The story told of a Christian farmer who surveyed the devastation on his farm, turned to his wife and said, “Well, dear we have work to do!”  There were no questions for this man – he believed that the God whom he worshipped, in some mysterious way had it all in hand.

John Westendorp
2MaxFM September 7th 2025

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