We’re gone with a gasp.
Add them all up and we may last
Seventy or eighty years.
We’re so proud of what we do,
But it’s really just one struggle after another.
So quickly spent.
So quickly squandered.
That sure looks like you’re angry with us,
Even those of us who orient our lives toward you.
So, teach us how to count our days
That we might spend them wisely and well.
(Everyday Psalms, Psalm 90, page 211)
A young mother with two little boys is struck by a drunk driver on her way back from the store where she has purchased flowers for a family celebration. That woman was my sister.
After two successful bouts with cancer, a middle-aged woman has a stroke that leaves her significantly disabled for the final three decades of her life. That woman was my mother.
In my years of work as a hospital chaplain, I’ve seen the most heart-breaking things. A baby who dies unexpectedly. A young black man shot and killed for racially motivated reasons. A driver falls asleep at the wheel, crossing the center line and killing someone in a head-on collision. A miscarriage. An awkward fall leading to brain damage. A suicide. A biking accident leading to paralysis. A father loses his job due to poor management. A neighbor molests a youth. I could go on.
There are things in this world that are senseless. They truly are. We can face them with a stiff upper lip and say God is teaching us a lesson, but there is no meaning and purpose to them in and of themselves. They happen to devastating consequences and no one benefits.
People die or get broken, disfigured or traumatized. Evil ideologies and evil people hold sway at times. Things seem to go well for a time, but then we hit a wall. Dreary days pass by without meaning or purpose, boring and empty and dull. Sometimes I just need to ask that one-word question that haunts so many people: WHY?
The WHY question is the hardest one to answer, but it’s one we all invariably ask. If this life has any meaning and purpose at all, the WHY question is unavoidable. It’s no surprise the Psalms are full of them.
The problem is that, in some regards, asking the WHY question doesn’t help. It’s not a question we get answers to readily. We see the psalmists whispering and yelling their pained questions in these ancient Hebrew poems. But their prayers go one way, toward God, and we don’t get heaven’s answer. And yet if God is alive and active in the world, how can we avoid asking? And really, God alone can answer us. When it comes down to it, if the book of Job is any indication, God himself is the answer.
Jesus himself prayed his WHY question. Drawing from the cry of a psalmist centuries before him, he begged from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And so many of us have been echoing both the psalmist and Jesus with similar words ever since. And as you and I pray our WHYs, Jesus shows us his marred hands and feet.
Julien of Norwich suffered deeply and had a near-death experience. During one of her “showings,” visions arising from the experience, she had a vision of Jesus addressing her WHY question about the senselessness of the world. He replied, “It was necessary that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”
From our bland depressions to our devastating traumas, we need the ability to pray the seeming senselessness of our lives. We need prayer to connect us to the only one who can weave our lives into his life, our stories into his Big Story, so that it all makes sense in the end — even if things just don’t make sense now. For all manner of things shall be well.
Prayer: Why, God, why? Why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this? Why would you let such a tragedy happen? You have the power, don’t you? You love me, don’t you? Then why? Hear my prayer and come quickly to rescue me! Because this is the worst! Make things right. Make things well. Make all manner of things to be well. By the wound of Christ. Amen.
For further reading: Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. Beacon Press, 2006.