How do we get to the morning, to the sunshine, to the joy?
There is only one way.
By waiting for it. We can’t hurry the dawn, no matter how many anxiously we pace the floor or how impatiently we watch the clock. And so the question is not do we wait or not wait, because waiting is all we can do. The question is, How will we wait? Will we wait well… or will we wait poorly?
[Ken Gire, The North Face of God]
A friend of ours has a young daughter who suffers tremendously from eczema all over her body and even, at times, her face. She asked my wife why is it that God would not heal her “itchies”.
Kids always have the hardest questions. But Fi is full of some pretty good answers.
Fi: He wants to and he will heal your itchies and everything else that is not right about you. He promised us that and it is up to us to have faith in that promise.
I suppose waiting well is to have the kinda hope that Fi imparted to Eliza when she told her that.
Beyond that though, we were discussing it afterwards- and it didn’t escape my notice that Fi didn’t FULLY answer Eliza’s question. She could have retorted “but why doesn’t he do it NOW?!”
I don’t consider that an unanswerable question. I think it falls well within the scope of the revealed knowledge of Scripture and of the Holy Spirit. I think that “we just have to have faith”, although true in the RT Kendall sense of believing God’s promises, is a lazy answer that too many people, even pastors and experienced Christians, appeal to.
I think Fi answered Eliza’s question well, but she only half answered it..
It may be an opportune time for the church to have another long hard think about the Theology of suffering.