WHEN THERE IS NO ANSWER FOR "WHY"

Psalm 23:5-6

Disconsolation:  adjective, without consolation or solace; hopelessly unhappy; inconsolable; causing dejection; cheerless; gloomy.
      Dictionary.com -- https//www.dictionary.com/browse/disconsolation

When I was a second grade teacher, answering the questions of children was so much easier.  I could tell them why the sky was blue and why it rained with simplified scientific explanations.  When one of my students came to me sobbing, I was able to assure her that, despite what her little friends told her, the tooth she swallowed would not chew her stomach up with a basic overview of the human gastro-intestinal system.  Everything, I told her, would work out in the end, and the tooth fairy would understand because this kind of thing happened all the time.

It was easy to help them discover the answers for themselves ("That's an interesting question.  Let's look it up together!") or ask leading questions to awaken empathic thinking, like, "Why do you think Jimmy got so mad when you called him a doo-doo head?"

But as an adult, a pastor, the "why" questions are not so easy.

• "Why is there death (cancer, terrorism, war)?
• "Why are are little children starving to death in this world?"
• "Why do innocent children and adults have to suffer?"
• "Why, if I prayed for God to watch over and protect my husband every day, did he die of a heart attack at the age of 65?"  (Okay, that one is mine.)

And more specifically, "Why does God allow this to happen?  Why isn't God doing something about this?  Why didn't God answer my prayers?"

Even as a minister, I don't have any good answer to "why" even to my own why questions.  So I tell other people, and myself, that human suffering is so complex, mainly because we live in a broken, unredeemed world, and people are allowed to make their own choices that may cause harm to themselves or others.

Death and suffering are not God's perfect will and were not part of the original blueprint of Eden and creation.  Because of human unloving selfishness and rebellion (a.k.a. sin), God's perfect will doesn't always happen.  Instead, there's always God's intentional will that through redemptive grace brings goodness and wholeness into a broken and sick world and consolation in our our disconsolation.

Psalm 22 is a lament that articulates David's the disconsolation of his exile from King Saul's court that made him a hunted man.  David is innocent.  He has done nothing to deserve this.  He has been God's obedient and faithful servant, but in the first verses, he cries out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  Why, are you far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?  O, my God, I cray by day, but you do not answer; and by night, find no rest." (Psalm 22:1-2)

Why?  Why?  Without solace, hopelessly unhappy, dejected, and inconsolable, desperately seeking the answer to why.  Why is he being punished when King Saul is the insane one, the one who disobeyed God?

In our own times of disconsolation, we desperately look for the why answers, the answers that will make sense of the incomprehensible, and we need something more than some theological explanation.  We need comfort and consolation that can't always be provided by human words.  It can be only provided by God's redeeming love manifesting in the midst of our disconsolation.

In Psalm 22:14-18, David is dying, spiritually and emotionally, from the persecution of his enemies.  He is like one starving, his flesh withering away.  God's response to David's cries is found in Psalm 23:5-6:  "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows."

In the middle of our own times of disconsolation, God sates our hunger for the restoration of hope, for mercy, for comfort, for the assurance that God does hear us, that God is with us.  He claims us as his own, marks us with his love, and provides beyond our need.  

When there is no answer for "why," there is always an answer to "who":  Emanuel -- God is with us.  That's what Christmas is about:  consolation, the gift of Christ that brings redemption to our lives and to our world.  Christ, who bears our suffering with us and is the hope for all humankind.