When my first born son was in primary school I used to pack him a lunch every morning. I included a napkin on which I would write, “I love you!” and I’d draw little hearts on it. I wanted him to know that even if we weren’t together, I was always there with him. All he had to do was seek me. Those memories are engrained in his mind and he often recalls them with great joy.
Only days ago, a woman was recounted some of her childhood memories to me. Like too many people, some of those memories were not as pleasant as the one my son has stored away. After sharing her memories she asked, “Where was He then? What kind of god would allow these things to happen to a child?”
I don’t have those answers. I don’t think anyone of us does. I also think that to try and answer for Someone else is presumptuous and dangerous. All I could do was draw upon my own experiences of having asked those very same questions. The key to finding answers is asking them of the Right One.
In my case, over time, I had learn to trust and give the power of those memories to Him. Today, I can say with all assurance, that He was there. In seeking and finding God, His power reigned. The memories will never leave. The last thing we want to do is negate or diminish someone’s experiences and paint over them as if they never existed; choice is involved. Someone who is pushed off a precipice by a loved one will never forget that experience, but will they chose to remember the details surrounding who pushed them, why, and what more could have happened, or will they chose to remember that His mighty hand caught them and broke their fall?
The last thing I can comfortably say to a hurting soul is that God will not waste their pain, but that is something they need to find out in an intimate relationship with Him; that’s when those questions are answered. So what does a person respond to that question? All we can do is show His love, mercy and compassion until they are ready to receive it directly from the source. That is why we’re here.
Christ came as the expression of His Father’s love and when He returned to be with Him, He left that honourable task with us.
“You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart,” Jer. 29:13 ESV.
