Prayer, The Search for Answers, Words of Endurance
When the Answer is Silence
“When I lay these questions before God I get …
a silent certainly not uncompassionate, gaze.
As though He shook His head
not in refusal but waiving the question.
Like, Peace child; you don’t understand.”
CS LEWIS (A GRIEF OBSERVED)
When she was a young girl, Corrie Ten Boom once asked her father a difficult question, the answer for which she would not be able to understand and the reality of which she would not be able to bear. In her book, The Hiding Place, she describes her father’s answer:
He turned to look at me, as he always did when answering a question, but to my surprise he said nothing. At last he stood up, lifted his traveling case from the rack over our heads and set it on the floor.
“Will you carry it off the train Corrie?” He said.
I stood up and tugged at it. It was crammed with the watches and spare parts he had purchased that morning.
“It’s too heavy,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “And it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl to carry such a load. It’s the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger you can bear it. For now you must trust me to carry it for you.”
And I was satisfied. More than satisfied – wonderfully at peace. There were answers to this and all my hard questions – for now I was content to leave them in my father’s keeping.
THE HIDING PLACE BY CORRIE TEN BOOM
It absolutely drives me nuts when I don’t know the answer – when I don’t understand! But my questioning, impatient spirit is quieted within me when I realize there will come a time when I will know everything completely. I can trust my Abba Father because I know …
When I was an infant at my mother’s breast,
I gurgled and cooed like any infant.
When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.
We don’t yet see things clearly.
We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist.
But it won’t be long before the weather clears
and the sun shines bright!
We’ll see it all then,
see it all as clearly as God sees us,
knowing him directly just as he knows us!
1 CORINTHIANS 13:12 (THE MESSAGE)
On the journey with you,
Jan Dravecky
