I wrote an email yesterday for a weekly prayer to be shared…I tend to write a personal note each time…I re-read that email this morning and thought, perhaps, there is something worth sharing here in it.

This past weekend my community suffered a terrible tragedy that claimed the life of a beautiful girl, seriously injuring her sister and a friend, and forever altering the lives of the others in that vehicle that night. Our school and town are in shocked disbelief…with a resounding question already being asked: “why?”

I have talked to a few teenagers in these last few days that know this girl, her family, and the others involved in the accident…the heartbreaking theology reality is in that one simple word: why…

The Sunday School answer is of course a resounding “no”…but if you ever sat with an 18 year old with tears streaming down their face as they ask you if God could have intervened and did not or maybe He could not…the question suddenly becomes harder to answer as you feel their pain.

There is no answer to why…and if there was, it would not change the current reality of loss…nor would it make sense that this precious Student of the Month is no longer laughing with her basketball team and never will again.

Faith is not believing in something you can understand…something you can control…something that you can see. Faith is believing in something that is bigger than you, sees more than you see, and can do more than you can even imagine.

But, sometimes, it means not understanding or liking the events that swirl around impacting us with such excruciating, confusing, chaotic pain and still choosing to believe anyway.

I learned once that instead of asking “why” we should begin to ask “what now” or “what next”…this is our current situation so what we do next with it suddenly becomes important.