Stewards of the mysteries

I love to run because it allows my brain to iron out wrinkles in my thoughts. I wander from one trail of thought to another. I think.  I pray a lot.  And out on the paths through the woods, I often talk with God outloud about things on my mind and heart.  Sometimes there is no obvious answer at all, but yet another question.

Sometimes my runs shift deeper into the forest.  With so many pressing needs on my heart and overwhelming situations that friends are facing right now, this week I was thinking about the big question of pain and suffering in the world.

That mystery was not about to be solved on a five mile run in the park.

But even in what seems to make no sense to us, or cannot be verbalized in 140 characters or less, God urges us to continue to ask questions about the improbable, impossible, unexplainable, and unexpected.  God nudges us to seek understanding in what we can know, to not be swayed by the popular opinions of the internet moment, but pursue what is consistent with truth and sustainable with life.  What cannot be explained easily means there is a deeper explanation.

How can God allow pain and suffering?  Suddenly I thought, What if...that is the wrong question? 

Maybe the question is not How can God allow pain and suffering?  
But maybe the real question is....
                 How can WE allow pain and suffering?

Are we blaming God for what is our own lack of compassion?
 
What's wrong with the world is not God.  In his book Crazy Love, Francis Chan points out, "[God] has more of a right to ask us why so many people are starving.

The answer to this age-old question is not a singular "fill in the blank" solution at all, nor in focusing on the blame, but in determining our response to pain and suffering as Christ-followers.

"God has commissioned us as agents of intervention in the midst of a hostile and broken world," says author Philip Yancey in his book Why...The Question that Never Goes Away.

It is easy to justify ourselves.  "I have no control over that."  Or in light of the monumental needs around us, "What little good would my measly effort do?"   Those are the words of despair and meaninglessness.

Pain and suffering are a mystery, but we are not left without the reality of hope...or compassion, which means to suffer alongside.  Not to throw money at a  problem, or leave it to a government program, or blame someone else.  These are people we are talking about, not impersonal problems to be solved.  As healer and redeemer, Jesus always showed us, compassion is a personal action verb.

As author Steven Garber reminds us in his book Visions of Vocation:  Common Grace for the Common Good:

                        "I can't do everything, but I can do something."

The point is not answering a profound mystery, but intervening in light of God's redeeming love.

This is how one should regard us,
as servants of Christ
and stewards of the mysteries of God.

                     1 Corinthians 4. 1