When I first planned to write a blog entry with this title a few weeks ago, my life was in the middle of chaos. My younger son was in the hospital. I had too many commitments and too many things that I planned to do but hadn’t gotten done. It felt like life was spinning out of control, but I knew, even as I struggled, even as I failed to make the time to sit down and write about it, that there is a rock.

You keep him in perfect peace
    whose mind is stayed on you,
    because he trusts in you.
Trust in the Lord forever,
    for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.

Isaiah 26:3-4

I was struggling with that trust and not quite staying in that perfect peace. Somehow it always seems harder to deal with challenges facing my children than the challenges I personally face. But God is merciful and compassionate: he held me through those struggles. While I still have way too many things on my plate, especially since I don’t teach in the summer, many things are better. I can feel the stable footing underneath me rather than just clinging to the promise that it’s there.

I worked on finding the time to get back to my writing and started to think about other topics since this one was no longer immediately relevant to my life.

But then . . . 

I woke up one morning to news of a building collapse: 12 stories of condos just demolished. Hundreds of people’s lives have been suddenly thrown into a chaos that puts my personal struggles into perspective.

The news has become full of stories. The story of the 10-year-old boy who woke trapped and terrified and was rescued along with that of the neighbor who helped find and save him. Stories of the missing from worried and grieving families. Stories of those who survived and must now figure out how and where to go on living.

We watch in horror and sorrow. We pray, but too often our prayers are nothing more than cries of “Why?”

As I write this, we don’t have all of the human answers as to why, and we certainly don’t have any answers as to why God allowed it to happen. I do, however, see a lesson for all of us in the aftermath.

As I watch the various people personally affected by the tragedy, I see two responses. Some are anxious for news but express confidence that the search and rescue teams are working hard and doing the best they can to find any survivors who might be in the rubble. Others are simply impatient and express certainty that they could do better, that the search and rescue teams are not moving as quickly as they could and should be.

Isn’t that a supremely human reaction? Aren’t we often convinced that we could do things better and faster?

Yet the reality is that those working on the pile of rubble are well-trained and are still taking risks. The evidence we have is that they are, in fact, doing the best they can, however tempting it is to believe otherwise and to encourage them to hurry.

We do the same thing with God in circumstances like these and many others. Our prayers sometimes turn into instructions rather than petitions. We blame God for not moving fast enough, for not doing things the “right” way (our way).

God is smarter than we are. He understands the bigger pictures. It isn’t easy to wait. It isn’t easy to accept that our way isn’t the best way. It isn’t easy to trust. But that’s what we need to do. We have to trust that the rock is solid, even when it doesn’t feel that way.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Isaiah 55:8-9

you whom I took from the ends of the earth,
    and called from its farthest corners,
saying to you, “You are my servant,
    I have chosen you and not cast you off”;
fear not, for I am with you;
    be not dismayed, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
    I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

Isaiah 41:9-10

Photo by Max Kleinen on Unsplash