One thing you can do when you don’t have any answers

“I honestly wonder if God gives a rip about me,” the young woman mused as she flopped onto the couch. I listened as she gave voice to her honest feelings, and silently begged God for words that would soother her broken heart and convince her that He most certainly does give a rip.

I’m meeting more and more people like her, people whose lives have turned upside down. They read the latest best seller or listen to self-help podcasts or look to Oprah for answers, searching for anything that might heal their brokenness and give them hope for a brighter future.

As they struggle to make sense of their lives, they also struggle with God.

• Where was He when my [trusted person] sexually abused me?
• How could God let the court take my baby from me?
• Why didn’t He let me be born into a different family? One that was loving and normal?

When you’re a problem-solver like me, it’s a helpless feeling to listen and have no answers. So I sit and wonder along with them.

We talk about Joseph, and wonder why God would allow Him to be sold into slavery by his brothers.

We talk about Ruth, and wonder why God allowed her husband to die and then gave her a love for her embittered mother-in-law.

We talk about Jesus, and wonder why God would allow His only Son to be beaten and sacrificed for the likes of us.

Us, in our broken, dysfunctional messes. We find no answers, but we do find hope if we press on.

Hope that God can

• Redeem all the junk from our pasts to make us stronger.
• Help us deal with our daily struggles.
• Give us the courage to make better choices.

But it can be hard to trust God when you feel like you’re at the end of your rope. When life is complicated by depression, loneliness, health problems, financial woes, or family dysfunction. Sometimes it seems God is nowhere to be found.

If you’re not at the end of your rope right now, would you ask the Lord to use you to encourage someone who is? You’ll be surprised at how many hurting people need someone to be a friend and listen.

‘I assure you, when you did it to one of the
least of these my brothers and sisters,
you were doing it to me!’
~Matthew 25:40b (nlt)

You might not have any answers, but your presence and support might be the thing God uses to show someone He cares.

Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net