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There is much that I don’t understand about this life we live.

I don’t understand why good prayers often go unanswered. Prayers that even an indifferent parent would grant.

I don’t understand why young mothers die horrible deaths or why four year old little girls suffer abuse.

I don’t understand why God often seems so distant, especially in our darkest moments.

I simply don’t understand.

Yet this thing I know to be true, even if I don’t understand why:

Sometimes God asks us to choose between understanding and Him.

This is the story of Job. Horrific things happened; God was silent.

Job’s friends offered their limited understanding; God offered the fullness of Himself.

And that’s the thing about understanding, you see. When we demand it, we usually don’t get it and in the demanding we lose the grace that God offers to us.

If you choose God, however, you gain what you need most of all.

We will all receive understanding someday, whether on this or that side of death, but we need God now. Always.

If you have to choose, choose God.

That was Job’s choice. He admitted his incomprehension and bowed before the God he had seen. And he was satisfied, ending his life full of days.

When we choose God, we receive the gift of His presence and that will satisfy us more than any understanding ever could.

We need God desperately. More than we need anything else.

If you choose God, you will eventually gain understanding. If you demand understanding, you may lose the presence of God and yet never receive the understanding you gave up everything to gain.

If you have to choose, choose God. It is this grace that will get you through the hard thing you do not understand.

This grace that is the presence of God Himself.

Art credit: Photo of space by NASA