Why?

Sometimes  people who are hurting ask me difficult questions about God.

Sometimes in my own life I have asked very difficult questions too. Sometimes it can feel that there is no answer.

This poem by R S Thomas somehow helps:

” Nuclear”

It is not that he can’t speak;

who created languages

but God? Nor that he won’t;

to say that is to imply malice. It is just that

he doesn’t, or does so at times

when we are not listenting, in

ways which we have yet to recognise.

as speech. We call him the dumb

God with an affrontery beyond

pardon. Whose silence so eloquent

as his? What word so explosive

as that one  Palestinian

word with the endlessness of its fall-out?

And the simple prayer of Reinhold Niebuhr:

” God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change

the courage to change the things I can

and the wisdom to know the difference.

And the words from a hymn called ” God is love: let heaven adore him”

” God is love: and he enfoldeth

all the world in one embrace;

with unfailing grasp he holdeth

ev’ry child of ev’ry race.

And when human hearts are breaking

under sorrow’s iron rod,

there they find the self-same aching

deep within the heart of   God”