All Manner of Things Will Be Well

              My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? The beginning of Psalm 22 echoes a cry of humanity through the ages. It was the cry of Jesus from the cross in his last moments in this life.  It is important for us to know this because our lives get us into incredible miseries sometimes and we don’t know how to get out of them.  What the psalmist is speaking about is severe depression and a seeming lack of God’s presence in this world.  How do I find God when all seems to be lost?  How can I maintain my faith in the presence of forces that seem to be stronger than God, stronger than myself? 

            Have you been there?  I certainly have.  I have had profound moments of doubt when I really didn’t know if God was God at all.  When I look at television and see the people scrambling to get out of Syria and Iraq and into the European Union, I know the despair that they are feeling and I can imagine all of them crying those words of the Psalm.  When I see the families involved in mass shootings or when I think about the events of 9/11, I know the fear and doubt that arises in the hearts of the people involved in those things.

            When Rosie and I lost our beach house in 1993, we had a terrible moment of doubt.  We had had the place for 15 years; our kids had grown up there and we loved it for a place of refuge in the spring or the fall; where we could get away and simply contemplate and rest.  We cried when the ocean ate that place.  That wasn’t overwhelming suffering, but it certainly got our attention.

            Job suffered worse. In the midst of the worst of his suffering, he cries out:

                            Today also my complaint is bitter;

                        his hand is heavy despite my groaning.

                               Oh, that I knew where I might find him,

                        that I might come even to his dwelling!

                                I would lay my case before him,

                        and fill my mouth with arguments.

                                I would learn what he would answer me,

                        and understand what he would say to me.

                              Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power?

                       No; but he would give heed to me.

                              There an upright person could reason with him,

                       and I should be acquitted forever by my judge.

            That is a powerful cry and Job never loses his belief that God will somehow come to his aid.   Even though his friends continue to tell him that his miseries are all his fault; Job knows that in the end, his God will understand and that he will be acquitted.  That is a marvelous statement of faith, and why the book of Job is one of the most meaningful in all of scripture. 

            The point of all of this is not to diminish doubt.  Show me someone who has never doubted and I will show you someone who has never really lived.  This world has a way of placing things in our path that make us wonder sometimes where God has gone.  That is why we know that Satan is also real and that the fight between light and darkness will continue to go on.  It isn’t what we want; but it is certainly what we have.

            When I look at my life, and the lives of most of the people around me, I have to say that we are very lucky.  Misery is not our daily fare.  I don’t lose my faith daily because of what the world continues to throw at me.  I have a community of people around me who care deeply for each other and I know that I will have help when trouble comes.  I don’t feel abandoned by God or by anyone.  In that, I am extremely fortunate. 

            What I know above all things is that God understands what human life and human suffering is all about.  I know this because of the life of Jesus who not only lived through great troubles, but also died in a terrible way. 

            I loved Nikos Kazanakis’ book, The Last Temptation of Christ, which was made into a powerful movie.  In the story, at the moment of Jesus’ crucifixion, Satan appears to him as a small child and offers him a new life.  In his dream on the cross, Jesus accepts this and soon we see him back in Bethany, married to Mary and having children with her.  He meets Paul, who tells him, I really didn’t need you.  The story ends with Jesus back on the cross and the Devil foiled in his last attempt to circumvent God.  It is a great story of faith and triumph in the face of terrible misery; and it is the reason that I know that God understands and loves us as human beings who experience all that happens to us.  I also know like Job, that in the end as the great nun Julian of Norwich so elegantly said:  all will be well.  All manner of things will be well.