An Opportunity

I've been pretty angry at God over the last week. Ever since we found out that Kara was pregnant, I had been praying that God would bless her with this baby. I prayed every day that God would provide the things that the baby needed to live and grow - physically and in every way so that our child would live to be completely God's.

When we found out that we lost the baby, I felt hurt and let down by God. There were not any other things that I wanted more than these two requests, and I wanted them for God's glory. I had been asking and asking, and it made me mad to find out the news.

I can't say that I'm over it yet. At this point, I certainly still don't understand the situation any better. I don't understand how to reconcile Jesus' statement of "Ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it" with all of this and so many similar experiences of other people.

I don't understand Jesus, but I still trust Him. He's still Lord, even though I may not be very happy with Him at times. Being unhappy with Him, I hadn't really wanted to talk to Him for several days. Then yesterday I noticed myself being ridiculously irritable with people and I knew I needed some time with the Lord. It wasn't anything spectacular, and I didn't hear any audible voices or anything, but it was just nice to feel like I can at least start my way back to a normal relationship with God.

One thing I thought about during that time- I've said from pulpits before that in tough times Jesus often leaves the question of why something happened as being irrelevant - like the story of the man born blind in John 9. He focuses more on how situations of suffering bring with them opportunities to be of more use to God. I don't know why it took me until yesterday to think that this could apply to our situation.

I don't think I'm ever going to understand the difficulty of how Jesus tells us that He will give what we ask in His name, yet so many good things that we ask for don't happen. But when I spent some time with Jesus yesterday I realized that even though that question is at the forefront of my mind, in the eternal perspective of things it's probably not the question that matters most. Then I started to think about how this situation could put us in a place to be more useful to God.

Every one of these kids here has experienced profound loss. In terms of difficulty, my life still has no comparison to theirs. And I don't understand how, but I feel that after losing this baby, Kara and I are in some way a little more a part of these kids, more one of them, now than we were a week ago.

So I hope I'm right- that I may not understand this God I've given my life to, but that somehow He will use the tough time we've been through to help these 47 who have suffered so much to enter more fully into their new lives in Him.