But Why?

It’s amazing how much I can learn about the nature of God from spending time with my kids. Most weekday mornings I take my kids to school. Emma is always the first to drop off and then Jack and I have a 10 minute drive from there. Every morning it’s different with Jack, sometimes he simply wants to play with his leap pad and sometimes he wants to sing theme songs to his favorite cartoons. There are mornings that Jack wants to talk and point out everything he sees … everything. He will often ask questions that are simple but there are those questions that come that I struggle to answer.

The questions I struggle with aren’t because they are complex for me but they are extremely complex for him. As soon as he ask “Why?” and I give him the only answer I think he can understand “That’s just the way it is” he gets frustrated because that’s just not good enough. Jack like his father can be quite persistent in seeking an answer to his questions and pretty much everything else. He continued to ask “why?” and then came the lightbulb moment for me.

So often in my life I have asked God the same question in the same way and often received the same answer “That’s just the way it is”. God doesn’t withhold answers from us or keep us in the dark because He has no desire for us to know. Like my situation with Jack God knows we could not even begin to comprehend or understand the complex answers to our seemingly simple questions. There are plenty of questions that I have about why things had to be the way they are or why I have had to go through particular situations in life. I am currently 34 years old and just now growing into enough maturity to understand that there are answers that even if God gave me I wouldn’t be able to comprehend let alone really want to hear.

Jack’s immature persistence and frustration reminded me of Job’s interaction with God in Job 38 –

1Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:

“Who is this that obscures my plans

with words without knowledge?

Brace yourself like a man;

I will question you,

and you shall answer me …

And Job’s response in Job 42 –

1Then Job replied to the Lord:

2“I know that you can do all things;

no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

3You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’

Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,

things too wonderful for me to know …

Here is what I took away from these moments with Jack: 1. God loves us and doesn’t want to withhold from us. 2. God knows the limits of our comprehension. 3. God has everything under control and we should just sit back and enjoy the ride.