Why?

I have just begun a phased return to work after several months off.

While health is not yet 100% and situations that helped to precipitate our crisis are not yet fully resolved, it is very good to be re-engaging with ministry, and especially good that my return to work has begun with a conference along with my colleagues in the Interim and Transition Ministry team.

But now that I am beginning to look ahead to re-engaging, I am also looking back over these last few months.

A question that has been in my mind for much of this last period of time remains and persists.

Why?

Of course, we all ask that question at times in our lives, and not least when we face an unexpected, untimely or particularly tragic bereavement, or an unwelcome diagnosis or many other life events of that nature.

Why?

In general, I tend to consider that suffering simply remains a mystery.

The Cross of Jesus does not explain suffering, but it does remind us that suffering cannot be avoided, that even the very best person who ever lived suffered in a cruel, painful, untimely and unjust way. But the Cross also reminds us that in our suffering we are not alone, and that – in the end – the reality of suffering cannot be divorced from the even greater reality of God’s love.

That does not explain the mystery... but perhaps it can change our perspective and our experience of unjust suffering.

At times, my questions have taken a more specific turn.

Why?

Is what we have experienced to do with what some would regard as ‘spiritual warfare’ (however, that is understood)?

Or, instead could this be the means by which God is calling us to review our direction, callings, ministries?

Or, there again, might it be a call to repent for some (as yet unidentified) sin or wrong turn?

I cannot reflect on these questions for too long before being reminded of the story of Job in the Old Testament. Afflicted by the most dreadful suffering, Job finds his friends attempting to explain his afflictions, to debate reasons and solutions and to offer him advice and counsel.

Job ultimately condemns all their counsel, beliefs, and critiques of him as false.

When God eventually appears and speaks, he still offers no explanation.

So perhaps there are no easy answers, and maybe even the questions are not appropriate.

Perhaps it is just that ‘stuff’ (you may insert a more familiar and fruity word of your choosing!) happens. And when it does, perhaps we should simply keep on keeping on, obedient and faithful, trusting that the God of the Cross is present, even when he feels absent and appears indifferent and remains silent.

But it isn’t easy... I don’t suppose anyone said it would be.