Across the Pastor’s Desk by Kenneth Jensen

Kenneth Jensen is a retired Evangelical Lutheran Church Association pastor living in Albert Lea.

 

“I say to God, my rock, ‘Why have you forgotten me?’” — Psalm 42:9

These words of the Psalmist express anxiety, confusion and lament. They are words we hesitate to say lest we be judged as individuals without faith.

As a parish pastor for 24 years and a long-term-care chaplain for 15, I have heard the cry of faithful people over and over again: “Where is my God?”

I have heard it said by one who has lost a spouse, parent or child.

I have heard it spoken by those whose body has been attacked by a terminal illness or debilitated with a major injury.

I have heard it on the lips of those who grieve over the suffering of innocent people ravaged by war, poverty, hunger and epidemic diseases.

Where is my God? It is a question which draws me to find comfort in the book of Psalms. There we encounter persons of great faith who share our struggle — persons who know our pain, persons who experience our grief, persons who feel the absence of God when they need God’s presence the most.

It is OK to feel what we feel and it is OK to vent our feelings before God. It’s OK to question God. It’s OK to be angry at God. God is big enough to absorb the impact of our fists as we strike out in our pain and grief.

Even our Lord cried out from the cross, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?”

His plea was met with silence.

However, God was not absent, in spite of the silence. On Saturday the silence remained as Jesus descended into the realm of the dead.

The silence was finally broken Easter morning when the angel said, “He is not here. He has risen!”

A friend taught me the value of “survival verses,” as she called them. Survival verses are brief Bible passages to help us through times when God seems distant and silent. For me, Romans 8:26 has proved helpful.

“The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know for what we ought to pray, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.”

The day will come when the words of Carolyn Joyce Carty’s poem “Footprints in the Sand” will ring true.

“My precious child, I love you and would never leave you. During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then I carried you.”