Five years on and this is still something too big for me to process, there is no easy answes and even the hard ones still seem to feel cheap and ring hollow. Today is not about me, today is about the ones for who today is a day of mourning, a day of missing loved ones who will not be coming home. Today, even as I ask God why, my prayers are that those who mourn will be comforted and for peacemakers to rise up who will heat the hurts of communities and nations...
These words/poem/reflections by Adrian Plass help me a little in the face of the question 'why God', I hope they help you too...
"On this particular day, I feal a failure.
What am I allowed to wonder, Father?
Am I allowed to wonder why you make it all so difficult?
Even as I say those words the guilt settles.
Perhaps it isn't really difficult at all.
Probably it's me that's difficult.
Probably, because of my background, and my temperament, and my circurmstances, it was always going to be difficult for me.
But what if that's just a cop-out?
What if I'm kidding myself?
What if, deep inside, I know that my own deliberate doings and not doings has always made it difficult?
What if I'm one of those who has been called but not chosen?
In that case it's not difficult - it's impossible.
What if you don't exist at all, and death is a sudden stumble into silence?
(Can you let me know if you don't exist, by the way - before Friday night, if it's all the same to you).
There are moments, Father, when it seems so easy, so easy that I can't remember why it ever seemed so difficult.
Those moments pass - they're valuable - but they pass.
Have you noticed how, when those moments have gone, I try to walk away, but I can't?
I think I shall follow you even if you don't exist.
Even if I'm not chosen.
Even if it goes on being difficult...
Are you still listening?
I'm sorry to have made a fuss,
It's just on this particular day, I feel a failure.
My hands and feet hurt,
And there's this pain in my side."
Neat poem. I love Adrian Plass's writing!
Posted by: Helen | 12 September 2006 at 08:54 PM