She asks the same question over and over and over again.
She’s been asking since she was five.
“If God is good, why did He let evil into the world? Why did He create Satan?”
We have listened to her and talked through this question several times over the years, but it keeps coming back. We have told her that while we can do our best to answer and understand the world around us and God and His Word and good and evil, there are some things we can’t fully understand or answer on this earth.
Heaven abounds with answers and enlightenment, but here, we stumble a bit in the dark still.
She nods as though she understands. But then a few months later, the question comes up again. She’s stuck on it. It’s a question she will have to wrestle out with God over the years.
We all have things we get stuck on, things we can’t wrap our minds around or understand, and it can drive us crazy, if we let it.
Not too long ago, I was stuck on how God views women. I had been reading about David’s first wife, Mical (Me-call), and how she loved him so, but then, as the years went on, pain and hardship came in. Her father, Saul, pursued David to try and kill him. She was married off to another man. David gathered a few more wives to himself.
Eventually, over a political matter, David wanted Mical back. She was taken from her new husband and brought back to David. Mical, who was by this point not only hurt, but clearly angry, watched David from a window as he danced before the Lord. She was filled with “scorn.”
David went in to bless his family, including Mical, but she mocked him and threw venom at him with her words. He put her in her place, so to speak, and then all we know is that she “was barren the rest of her life.”
That’s it. That’s all we know. And as I read the story I felt angry myself. I had empathy for Mical. I’d be angry and hurt too! I want to know the rest of her story. Lord willing, one day I will.
But her story was a tipping point for me. It made me think of all the women throughout history who have been treated as property and as less than because they were women. And I accused God. “Do you even care about women? Do you even care about me, or am I just here to bear children and give myself for the pleasure of a man?”
I had some deep roots to deal with.
I know God, and I love Him deeply. I have nothing if I don’t have Him. He is my Father. But I needed to know how He saw me. I needed to know if He cared about my dreams. I needed to know I mattered beyond my role as a man’s helper.
Through the praying and wrestling and crying out, He answered me. But I had to get to a desperate place first.
In Matthew 5:3, Jesus says the poor in spirit are blessed. A more literal reading would be, “blessed are those who are desperate as a beggar.”
When we become desperate as a beggar, we are in a place to be wide open and vulnerable to really see the Lord and let Him heal us.
What are you stuck on today? What is the thing that is causing you to not completely trust the Lord? Are you ready to lay it all out before Him? Are you desperate as a beggar?
If you are, then you exactly where you need to be. He hears you, He sees you, and He wants to heal you. Your destiny is not to be in pain, but to walk in confidence as a delighted daughter of God.
You are not alone in your pain. Keep on, sister.
by Sarah Mae, author of Longing for Paris: One Woman’s Search for Joy, Beauty, and Adventure — Right Where She Is
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