By William R. Bouknight
Job 40:1-5, 42:1-6
Sometimes when I am with groups of children, I say to them, "If you could ask God any question, what would you ask Him?" Children raise questions like these: Why do dogs chase cats? Where does the sky end? Who does God’s job when he is on vacation? Is it true that my father won't get to heaven if he uses his bowling words in the house?
Recently I was at a restaurant seated near a mother and her little boy, perhaps 6 years old. I thought he was squirming around a lot, looking rather uncomfortable. Suddenly he asked, “Mom, why did God invent underwear?” Now, there’s a question I never dealt with in seminary, nor can I think of a single helpful scripture.
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A mother named Sally told me that her four-year-old daughter was having one of those days recently when she asked at least 100 questions. Finally, Sally said, “Honey, please give me a break. Please don’t ask any more “why” questions today, okay?” The little girl responded, “Can I say ‘how come’”?
The children might be surprised to learn that adults have questions for God too. Some of them are fairly frivolous. I would like to ask if the world wouldn’t be better without flies, mosquitoes, and gnats. While I would want to commend the Lord for making men and women look different, I might ask him why he couldn’t have made them think a bit more alike.
Then there are some deadly serious questions, like this one—how can we keep on going when life just breaks our hearts? In other words, how can we survive a significant loss? Or, how do we cope with grief?
Grief is simply the pain we feel over loss. Usually we relate grief to the pain of losing a loved one. But that’s not the only kind of grief. When you realize that you’ve gone as far up the promotion ladder in your company as you’re going to go, there may be grief over unrealized dreams. If you have to consider the possibility that you may never be a parent or grandparent, there may be grief. When your spouse says, “I want a divorce,” there may be intense grief. When your health begins to fail, there is grief over things you can no longer do. When your vocation turns out to be more stressful than fulfilling, there is grief over wrong choices and missed opportunities. If your child has a handicapping condition, there may be grief about what he may miss in his life. Everybody has to drink a cup of grief along the way. There is a line in Tennyson’s poem, “In Memoriam” that reads as follows: “Never morning wore to evening, but some heart did break.”