"Sermon" to myself.

Earlier, talking about loss and the things God teaches us through it, I said sometimes I don't want to know what God is going to teach me. And it's true.

Sometimes I don't want to know because sometimes I'm afraid it will hurt. I'm no stranger to pain -- in fact, I'm familiar enough to know that I don't like it. The losses hurt already, do I really want to surrender to the hands of a God who let it hurt?

Yes.

So why don't I? Why don't I let it all go and hand it all over? Sometimes it is because I'm scared. I don't have any guarantee that it won't hurt to heal or that I won't suffer loss again. But I do know that God uses the things that have hurt in our lives to shape us, to mold us more in his image. He knows, too, what it's like to hurt, to lose someone he loves.

God knows what it's like to lose a child. But he also knows the joy of receiving him back -- a joy he offers to us to share. Our God doesn't lead us through valleys he's never seen.

Sometimes it's because I'm angry. Because as often as I ask "Why God?" I know that underlying that question is often, "But why me?" Why my loved ones? Why did it have to touch my life? Why at all?

I don't always have good answers, either. I understand the Yancey/Brand concept of no pleasure without pain -- and that pleasure is the greater puzzle. I understand (but disagree with) Rabbi Kushner's final assessment that God simply can't stop these things, that he would if he could. I've read the story of Job -- and Job was mad, too.

Sometimes we don't get answers. Some relegate all evil and pain to the existence of sin in the world. Is it really sin that causes miscarriage? SIDS? Random cancers? Or other unexplained death? "Who sinned that this man was born blind?" No one.

God didn't cause any of it. And I have to trust him to heal it, even if it hurts, because he's the only one who can. I certainly can't. God didn't cause it, but he can use it for his glory -- if we (I) let him.