God’s sovereignty and will is without question. Even though his heart is for us, God is the Lord, and his ways are above our ways, his wisdom is beyond our understanding.
We see in the story of Job where he questions God about why he is suffering. Not that I blame him! Job was a righteous man, who “was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil”-(Job 1:1). His life was blessed by God; he had many children, land, and wealth. God himself acknowledged Job as a righteous man. In fact God brings Job up in a conversation with Satan, asking if he had seen Job, and how faithful he is in his walk before the Lord. Satan points out how easy it is to worship God when all is going well, and God gives him permission to test Job. As all that can go wrong does go wrong for Job, we see even in his despair a refusal to turn away from God. While Job does not question God’s ability or authority to afflict him, he does question God’s reasons for doing so. Job’s friends come to comfort him, and ultimately accuse him of doing something wrong to incur the wrath of God in his life. In the end God himself speaks, asking, “Who is this that darkens council by words without knowledge?” (Job 38:2) God then challenges Job, and Job realises his error in questioning God’s actions and motives. Like anyone who is going through a trying season, Job wants to know why life isn’t fair. This is not answered but we see the futility of trying to understand why God does what he does. We also see this in the life of Abraham. After Abraham is blessed with Isaac, the child of promise, God comes to him and tells him to “Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains”-(Gen 22:2). As a father of three beautiful children I cannot imagine how I would respond to that! I’m sure that Abraham was floored by this command from the Lord. But he obeyed, gathering wood, supplies, and servants. He then saddles the donkey, and takes his son up the mountain to be sacrificed to the Lord. If ever there had been a time to question the actions of God, this must surely be one of them! As a child I wondered why Abraham didn’t argue with God. After all this was the child through which God himself had promised to make a nation out of Abraham! What was God thinking! Abraham however does not question God, and God proves himself faithful by stopping Abraham, and providing a ram to take the place of Isaac.
I have been through many a season where things didn’t work out. It could have been a job I was trying to get and didn’t or difficulties in a Job that I did have. There have been times where I was honouring my wife, walking in righteousness, and loving my children and still bad things would happen. In those times I wanted to know why? Why is life so hard? What have I done to deserve this? Funny thing is, when God surprises me with blessings, rarely do I stop and question why he’s blessing me, or what did I do to deserve his blessing on my life. I just thank him, praise him, and keep going. I guess that is suppose to be the response in the face of a trial as well. To praise his name no matter what. At our wedding we worshipped to the song “blessed be the name”, and we have tried to make it the theme of our lives. We have often failed to do so, but I believe that the refrain from the song says it all, “You give and take away, my heart will choose to say, blessed be your name!”(Highlighting mine) We may not always know why we walk through what we walk through, or why God asks us to walk a particular path. We can, however, always know that God is good. Our hearts can choose to bless his name, even in the midst of life’s trials. God’s heart is always for us, and if we look closely we can see his hand working in the background of our lives.
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