What Is Needed And What Is Not

It’s official. My career as an ice dancer is over.

My doctor and I mutually came to this conclusion after I shredded my quad tendons during a fall on some ice.  One surgery and dozens of Percocet later (I had a Jerry Garcia Pez dispenser made for the occasion), I am a little surprised about my own reaction to the situation.  In a word, it’s “eh.”

Alright, it goes deeper than that. I really do hate this, and it hurt. A lot. But after the upper and lower portions of my leg were reconnected, my own little diversion into pain and discomfort actually made me more aware than ever of issues that many around me are going through right now – irreplacable loss, serious disease, and tragedies of many different kinds.  Things my predicament doesn’t come close to touching.  And when people are going through these horrible, painful life-changing situations, questions are often asked about the supposed goodness of God and the reality of His love.

This gets into a question that greater minds have grappled with for centuries, and which I won’t even attempt to answer here.  It gets asked in a variety of ways but can be summed up like this:  if God is love, why did He allow this?  Most answers I have heard are completely unsatisfactory because they  tend to be overly simplistic.  They spring more out of a desire to defend God as we understand Him than from any genuine wrestling with the question.

But here is one take-away:  God doesn’t need your defense or mine. He hasn’t put us here to offer an apologia.  Because God understands deep, heartfelt suffering from personal experience in the death of His Son, and because He is in fact all-loving, He allows us our questions.  He is OK with being screamed-at when we need to vent our pain. He is not going to write anyone off because they cannot come to terms with suffering and an allegedly benevolent God.   He gets it.  And in His way and in His time, He will begin to reveal Himself in ways that can bring comfort, healing  and some sense of purpose, even when that does not erase our pain. We need to let people question and even rail against God as they work through the situation, and to trust Him by proxy for them.

The second thing is we can do is to be "intentionally incarnational" – to simply be there without having to provide magic words (which do not exist anyway). We can stare at the floor with them, sharing the silence, the confusion, the pain, the questions and just be present.  Show up. Hug. Commiserate. Ask what they need - and then fulfill it to whatever degree you can.  Promise to pray. Then, actually pray.

Our faith does not give us all the answers. We won’t have those on this side of eternity. But if you are willing to give someone who is hurting the gift of your presence (and it is a gift) and be prepared to offer your comfort and support,  that will go a lot farther and be remembered a lot longer than any words you might have had to say.

We can best be used by the Holy Spirit when we are not trying to be the Holy Spirit. Be who God made you to be.