by Linda Cox
I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives. Those who love their life in this world will lose it. Those who care nothing for their life in this world will keep it for eternity. John 12:24-25 (NLT)
I feel as if we are living in a “season of why.” People I know personally are asking:
✦ Why doesn’t rain fall on drought-stricken fields?
✦ Why does the mother of a young college student halfway around the world die before her daughter gets home to see her?
✦ Why does a beloved husband of 60 years lie bedfast for months?
✦ Why does a family struggle to make ends meet as the father searches for work?
✦ Why does a house not sell when the owners simply want to move closer to their granddaughter to teach her about the Lord?
✦ Why does a person hold tightly to unforgiveness and bitterness?
✦ Why does a parent slip deeper and deeper into the darkness of Alzheimer’s?
✦ Why does a spouse walk out on a marriage of 30 years?
And if those questions are being asked just by people I know, the list will certainly grow as other people add their why’s.
And no doubt all would add:
✦ Why doesn’t God answer?
No matter how much we struggle with these questions, we simply have to admit that we have no answer for them. But as we sit in the silence of what we think is no answer, we find that the Lord’s answer has been there all along. No, it’s not an explanation of why. It’s just a very simple yet deafening answer—focus on WHO.
Jesus Christ. The One in whom our salvation rests. The One who is the “yes” to every promise God has made. The One who is with us always. The One who meets our every need.
As we focus on Him and His salvation, the “kernel of why” dies so that we can see, at last, new life in the answer of Who. And that changes our hearts and lives forever.
Linda Cox is a regular contributor to DivineDetour. She recently retired after twenty-five years as a district office secretary for the State of Illinois. Her first loves are studying the Bible and reading, but Linda occasionally tries her hand at writing. Her work is published in All My Bad Habits I Learned from Grandpa (Thomas Nelson), The One-Year Life Verse Devotional (Tyndale), Life Lessons from Grandparents (Write Integrity) and the Love Is a Verb devotional (Bethany House). She and her husband live on a farm with their two indoor/outdoor farm mutts.