Somewhere Between Peace and Patience

I’m going to describe someone, and you know him, or her. The person may be you, someone you know, a family member, a friend… but you know him. He is the man who spends more time watching the news than paying attention to his own life, more time reading the newspaper than reading His Bible, more time consumed with other people’s lives on TV than devoted to other people’s lives who need to hear the Gospel that he has let become a routine story. He claims to know why everything happens, all because of the sinfulness of people these days. And he knows nothing of peace.

On one level, it is easy for us to live at peace with one another in the midst of chronic disaster, knowing that we will be here for one another.

Where it has been impossible to live at peace this past month has been in our own hearts. We go to war with our worst enemy of all: Our own minds. Because of the chaos of the world these days, we war within ourselves trying to come up with answers, trying to define tragedy, attempting to explain the unexplainable heading that titles the same chapter written daily on the parchment of world history. The title is always the same: “Why Things Happen.”

Peace in that respect does not come easy, which may be why God warns us not to undertake such a foolish enterprise.

The minute you tried to explain why the Twin Towers were destroyed in 2001, you were playing a fool’s game.

The second you claimed to understand why the Tsunami hit Indonesia late last year, you were playing a fool’s game.

The minute you decided why Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans, you were far from righteousness.

If you dare to yet define the meaning behind Hurricane Rita, you violate the very heart of God Himself.

To define the meaning behind tragedy is a natural impulse to calm the war within ourselves, the struggle we hold within us to be at peace with our own fears. It is perfectly natural to wonder why things happen. It is actually very biblical to ask God why things happen. But the sin comes when you claim to know the mind of God, to know why things happen, when you decide to abandon the holiness of mystery in exchange for the arrogant, self-righteous, sinful nature of leaning on your own understanding.

To say that New Orleans was destroyed because of its sin is a claim to know the motives of the Lord, and that in itself is a sin. Not to mention, such thinking is foreign to the response we must offer as Christians to those displaced by such natural disasters. Not to mention the many faithful who lived in New Orleans. Not to mention, why didn’t the hurricane go ahead and destroy Tyler as well? Is New Orleans more sinful than we are?

When Job claimed to know the motives of the Lord, God responded to Job out of the storm. And by the time God finished addressing Job, Job knew that he had sinned by claiming to understand the ways of God. As Romans 11 asks, "Who can know the mind of God?"

If you have ever been in the midst of tragedy, you know that there is nothing more offensive than when someone tries to tell you why such things happen.

It is only the God who always keeps His promises who gives us this Word through His servant in Psalm 37:7—“Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him.”

These need to be the words of our sermons and conversations: Comfort. Comfort, O my people. God is a God who is ever present.

Psalm 103:8—“The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”

God is with us.

Psalm 119:49-50—“Remember your word to your servant, for you have given me hope. My comfort in my suffering is this: Your promise preserves my life.”

To those of you who have ever been displaced, by a storm, by fire, by tragedy, by death of someone you love, God is with us. God is a God of comfort who cares for us in all of our troubles. As you strive again this week to cultivate both peace and to begin thinking about cultivating patience, hear these words that must define our lives this week, words far greater than useless answers to why things happen. Instead, we live by these words from

2 Corinthians 1:3-4—“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.”

God does not want a chaotic creation. There is nothing about these tragedies that pleases God. God longs for His creation to know Him. God’s ultimate desire is to bring peace to the entire creation, which is why peace and salvation go hand-in-hand.