Yesterday’s attack at the Boston Marathon was tragic. What can we say to others? to ourselves? Where was God? I offer you two fragments that help me in times like this. 1. Be comfortable in being silent. Job’s three friends “wept aloud, tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was (Job 2:11-13). It is when they started talking that they got in trouble! Notice their presence “with him,’ i.e. Job, in his suffering. 2. The ultimate knowledge of God is to know that we do not know. Thomas Aquinas was a brilliant theologian who had written 20 very large volumes about who God is and how He works. On December 6, 1273 something happened to him that brought his teaching and writing to an end. He had such an encounter with God that people wondered if too much study had driven him out of his mind. After this he hardly spoke. Aquinas ended his career by refusing to write any more. When pressed, he said, “Everything I have written seems like straw in comparison with what I have seen and what has been revealed to me.” The designs and purposes of God are unfathomable. “How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Romans 11:33). Someday the curse will be lifted, but not yet (Revelation 21:4). I know God is good. I also know that the bombs that exploded and killed innocent people are the sins that Jesus on the cross. For now, let us pray for the families grieving and rest in the truth I learned from my mentor, Leighton Ford: “As I grow older, I understand God less but I trust Him more.”
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