Not KNowing Answers Is soothed By Knowing Who Does

​Tragically, a friend recently lost a child a child. A mere baby. I've struggled to process it.

Yesterday, spending time with my healthy young adult son at an amusement park, I couldn't help but ask, why do I get this moment, and another will not?

Why do I get to celebrate a child going off to college when another will never get to walk their child through the doors of kindergarten?

Why?

In my Christian faith, there is a belief that God is always working things in the direction of good. There are some Christians who believe that's really all we need to know. That's the final answer to 'why' and we Christians simply need to accept it.

Well, I don't accept that, to be honest. And trust me, God and I have had that conversation many times. God always responds in a way I understand, even if the understanding is no less comforting.

No less a good answer.

For in his answer, God reminds me that he and me - we have different understandings of good. Just because something doesn't feel good to me doesn't mean it isn't ultimately good. God's plan for the world ends in an ultimate goodness, and the getting there doesn't always feel good.

Which leads to the other complication of finding comfort in understanding God. God truly DOES understand that ultimate good, he daily lives within it. As much goodness as I've experienced in my life, and there has been plenty, it falls woefully short in living up to what will be my ULTIMATE goodness.

For years I resisted traveling to the Grand Canyon. I'd often say, I've seen the pictures, thousands of them, I know the majesty of it, why on earth would I spend a lot of time and money traveling there?

Then I traveled there. And I came to understand that those who had looked down into the depths of the Grand Canyon with their own eyes had always understood its goodness on a level I could never have understood without standing there myself.

Why doesn't God just invited us all to the Grand Canyon? Why doesn't God just reveal this goodness none of us understands so we can make sense of pains that no one can begin to understand?

I don't know.

God won't tell me.

But I believe one day he will.

And like a world suddenly made sense to me standing on the edge of a canyon in a way it never could have through pictures and the written word, one day it will.

I don't know all the answers, but I do believe God is lovingly holding them, beautifully wrapped, beyond excited for the day he can hand them to me.

And he will.

When?

I have no idea, but that - that is the idea of faith.