It’s
a question with no knowable answer, and yet I can’t help but ask it.
Why?
Why
does a seemingly perfectly healthy man in his early 30s pass away suddenly,
leaving behind his wife and young children?
Why
would a loving and powerful God allow such a tragedy to occur?
Why
him and not the sociopath who hurts people for the thrill of it and has no
remorse?
Why?
I
know there’s no answer, at least there’s not one that explains why with enough
reasons for to satisfy my mind. But I ask anyway.
At
times like this, there are plenty of cliché answers as people struggle to come
to terms with the tragic and sudden loss of a colleague, a friend, a teammate, a
son, a spouse. Phrases like “we just have to trust God” or “God has a plan, we
just don’t know it.” I understand people who say that are dealing with grief in
their own way and are trying to be helpful. I really do. But I find those
answers unsatisfying at best and, at worst, indicative of a God who has the
power to prevent or suffering and chooses not to.
So
I don’t know. More importantly, I know that I don’t know.
And
I know that I can’t know.
It’s
an unanswerable question that people with far more intelligence, far more
studying, and far more life experience than I have experienced have been unable
to come up with an acceptable (to me) answer.
So
what do I do? What CAN I do?
The
answer I keep coming back to is nothing.
And
everything.
There’s
nothing I can do, no amount of reading to be done, or questions to ask or
insights to be gleaned that will help me find what I’m looking for. There is,
ultimately, no satisfactory answer as to ‘why?’
But
rather than take that as an excuse to do nothing, it’s a call to do everything.
We may not know why people suffer and we may know it’s not fair, but that doesn’t
mean you don’t do anything to alleviate that pain.
And
it doesn’t have to be big things.
Smile
at the cashier in the grocery store.
Visit
a nursing home.
Ask
someone older than you about their childhood.
Leave
a note for the custodian at work to let you know you appreciate his or her
work.
Send
an email to someone thanking them for being a part of your life.
Take
your kid out for ice cream.
Better
yet, take your kid and the neighbor’s kids out for ice cream.
Do
something for someone else. We all suffer in big ways and, more often, in ways
we keep hidden from our friends, our loved ones and even (especially) ourselves.
Getting outside of that suffering, even briefly, to help someone else is often
all we can do. And while a visit to a nursing home may seem like nothing to
you, it could be everything to someone who just needs someone to listen for 45
minutes.
Why
do we suffer?
I
don’t know. I’ll never know. But I am sure that you can’t go wrong being nice
to someone.
