CAN YOU TRUST GOD?

And call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me.

PSALM 50:15

The letter did not bring good news. A close relative, very dear to me, had just learned she had bone cancer. Malignant cells from a previous bout with cancer had lain dormant for eight years before invading the skeletal parts of her body. One hip was already almost destroyed; the doctor was amazed she was still able to walk. Such incidents are all too common these days. In fact, during the writing of this chapter I had seven friends, all with cancer, listed on my "urgent" prayer page.

But cancer or other physical ailments are obviously not the only source of anxiety. Over lunch a few weeks ago a businessman friend confided that his company is perilously close to bankruptcy; another friend experiences heartache over a spiritually rebellious teenager. The truth is, all of us face adversity in various forms and at different times. A best-selling book by a secular psychiatrist put it very well with this simple opening statement: "Life is difficult."

Adversity and its accompanying emotional pain come in many forms. There may be the heartache of an unhappy marriage or the disappointment of a miscarried pregnancy or grief over a spiritually indifferent or rebellious child. There is the anxiety of the family breadwinner who has just lost his job and the despair of the young mother who has learned she has a terminal illness.

Others experience the frustration of dashed hopes and unfulfilled dreams: a business that turned sour or a career that never developed. Still others experience the sting of injustice, the dull ache of loneliness, and the stabbing pain of unexpected grief. There is the humiliation of rejection by others, of demotion at work, and, worst of all, of failure that is one's own fault. Finally there is the despair of realizing that some difficult circumstances — a physical infirmity of your own or perhaps a severely handicapped child — will never change.

All of these circumstances and scores more contribute to the anxiety and emotional pain we all experience at various times and in varying degrees. Some pain is sudden, traumatic, and devastating. Other adversities are chronic, persistent, and seemingly designed to wear down our spirits over time.

In addition to our own emotional pains, we often are called upon to help bear the pain of others, either friends or relatives. None of the illustrations I've used in the preceding paragraphs are just imaginary. I could put names alongside each one. Most of them are on my personal prayer list. When friends and loved ones hurt, we hurt.

On a larger scale, we read in our daily newspapers or see on the evening news instances of grief, heartache, and pain on a massive scale. War, terrorism, earthquakes, famine, racial injustice, murder, and exploitation occur daily in various parts of the world. The threat of a nuclear holocaust hanging over our heads has caused this period of history to be called the age of anxiety. In such days when massive crises appear on our television screens almost daily, even the Christian is tempted to ask, "Where is God? Doesn't He care about the thousands who are starving in Africa or the innocent civilians who are being brutally murdered in many war-ravished countries around the world?"

On a much smaller scale, those whose lives are free from major pain still experience the frequently frustrating or anxiety-producing events of daily life, which momentarily grab our attention and rob us of our peace of mind. A long-planned vacation has to be cancelled because of illness, the washing machine breaks down the day company arrives, your class notes are lost or stolen the day before a major exam, you tear your favorite dress on the way to church, and on and on. Instances of this magnitude are numerous. Life is full of them.

It is true that such mundane events are only temporary and pale into insignificance alongside the truly tragic events of life. Yet, for most of us, life is filled with such little events, little frustrations, little anxieties, and little disappointments that tempt us to fret, fume, and worry. One author has aptly captured the flavor of how such little frustrations can cause us to doubt God in a devotional book for high schoolers entitled, If God Loves Me, Why Cant I Get My Locker Open? We may smile a little at the scene such a title brings to our imagination, but the fact is, this is the plane of adversity on which many of us live each day. And it is in the crucible of even this minor level of adversity that we are tempted to wonder, "Can I trust God?"

Even when life seems to be going our way and our daily path seems pleasant and smooth, we do not know what the future holds. As Solomon said, "[We] do not know what a day may bring forth" (Proverbs 27:1). Someone has described life as like having a thick curtain hung across one's path, a curtain that recedes before us as we advance, but only step by step. None of us can tell what is beyond that curtain; none of us can tell what events a single day or hour may bring into our lives. Sometimes the receding curtain reveals events much as we had expected them; often it reveals events most unexpected and frequently most undesired. Such events, unfolding in ways contrary to our desires and expectations, frequently fill our hearts with anxiety, frustrations, heartache, and grief.

God's people are not immune from such pain. In fact, it often seems as if theirs is more severe, more frequent, more unexplainable, and more deeply felt than that of the unbeliever. The problem of pain is as old as the history of man and just as universal. Even creation itself, Paul tells us, has been subjected to frustration and groans as in the pain of childbirth (see Romans 8:20–22).

So the question naturally arises, "Where is God in all of this?" Can you really trust God when adversity strikes and fills your life with pain? Does He indeed come to the rescue of those who seek Him? Does He, as the text at the beginning of this chapter affirms,...