Troubled Times

Cyclones, floods, fires, mudslides, snowstorms, earthquakes. It’s been a confronting beginning to 2011 – and that’s not including the human induced tragedies. We can quite legitimately be asking, ‘Where is God in all this?’ Or is this what the Bible speaks about as the ‘birth pains’ – the signs that God is closer than we think?

Are these natural disasters an unusual confluence of events that will settle down, or is this the new normal? Is a hurting globe adjusting to human pollution, like a dog scratching at its fleas, or are we just experiencing what has always been and will always be?

Whatever is going on, such fearsome and frightening events put things in perspective. They put us in our place. They remind us how puny, how powerless and how pointless out lives really are. At the end of the day awards and achievements mean nothing. We are reminded that it is relationships that count. It is relationships that carry us through. It is relationships that we cling to.

The most important of these is a relationship with the Creator of it all. This is the relationship that can last forever, and can ensure our other relationships last beyond this mortal coil.

What else can we do in these tragic times but cry out to God for answers, for meaning – but also for comfort and solace. What have you done about your eternal relationship?

Why me?

It distressing to continue to hear about the various tragedies happening around Australia, the latest being the fires in Perth. How do we handle such things when they come close to us? Does the Bible give us any help in the valley of the shadow of death?

One of the very powerful things the bible does encourage us to do is complain and cry out to God. Despite our English heritage that wants to keep a stiff upper lip, and a funny tradition that you never question/get angry at God, the Bible actually says this is the way through tragedy.

Rather than 'praise God no matter what', around 1/3 of the Psalms are what are called Laments - cries of 'Why me?' aimed at God on the lips of people like King David. They take the following general form...

Where are you God?

Here is what is wrong [my enemies surround me, etc].

Yet, I will cling to you, where else can I go?

Maybe you could do this God!?

Eventually, I will praise you again.

In the midst of our distress it is OK to get angry at God, to doubt his presence and goodness, to rile and rave at what's going on. Some psalms even express 'terrible things' - that God would smite our enemies, dash their children on rocks. It seems God is more interested in honest, vulnerable prayers than perfect, pious prayers and that God is happy for us to be angry at him, and take it out on him, to get it out - rather than leave it in.

The difficult thing, yet the powerful thing, is to continue to cling to God in the midst the the tragedy. Cling to the very one who it seems is ignoring or hurting us. After all, is there anyone else who could help but God?

When we do this a glimmer of light appears at the end of the tunnel. Our questions are not answered, the problems are not solved, the darkness is not taken away - but we have someone walking beside us.

This is not just theory, but something I experience powerfully. When journeying with the parents of a suicidal teenager, or partner of a car crash victim; when I don't know how to understand the mind of God and have no words to pray, I pray laments. "Where are you God!?" In my own life, in the midst of my own mild tragedy, lament has been a God-send. It is in many ways pathetically simple, yet after I pray this way, and shed tears, somehow I feel better.

What I find most compelling about the idea of praying this way, is that this is what Jesus did in his darkest hour. In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prays a lament. In his anguish he sweats drops of blood. He literally asks, 'Why me God? Why this way? Maybe you could find another way! Yet, I will trust and cling to you.'

Then on the cross, Jesus prays the words of psalm 22, a lament. 'My God, my God why have you forsaken me?' It is a prophetic and powerful psalm. The quote is supposed to point us to the whole psalm, this is Jesus' prayer to his Father that get's him through. If Jesus prays this way, how much more do we need to!

Lament is not escape from tragedy, it is succour through tragedy. It is one of the only things we have to cling to, because it is clinging to God.