Scripture: Psalm 13:1–6; Romans 8:26–28; Matthew 27:45–50
Recently, I decided to test out artificial intelligence by asking one of the oldest questions in the human vocabulary. I typed one word: “Why?” AI responded: “That depends. Why what?” So I typed it again. “Why?” It said, “Because something happened, and you are trying to understand it.” That’s not bad. So I asked again. “Why?” This time it said, “Sometimes there is a reason. Sometimes there is a cause. Sometimes there is only a mystery wearing muddy shoes.” That sounded poetic and wise. So I kept going. “Why?” “Because human beings are meaning-making creatures.” “Why?” “Because uncertainty makes people uncomfortable.” “Why?” “Because you would rather have an explanation than admit you are not in control.” Now, that felt personal. So I asked again. “Why?” There was a pause. Then it responded: “Have you considered asking a different question?” I typed: “Why?” Finally, artificial intelligence gave me the answer every exhausted parent has given at least once: “Because.” I almost typed “why” once more, but I stopped before it could tell me to go ask my mother.
“Why?” may be one of the first serious questions we learn to ask. Children ask it almost as soon as they can speak. Why is the sky blue? Why do dogs bark? Why do I have to go to bed? Why can’t I have ice cream for breakfast? For every answer we give, they have another question ready. “Because ice cream is not a breakfast food.” Why? “Because it has too much sugar and that’s not good for you.” Why? “Because I said so.” There it is. The end of human knowledge. “Because I said so.”
As children, we ask “why” because the world is new. As adults, we ask “why” because the world has wounded us—and it is the challenge of living a long life to accumulate these questions. Some are small. Why did I come into this room? Why did I put my keys in the refrigerator? Why does the grocery store move the peanut butter the moment I finally learn where it is?
But beneath those everyday questions are the ones we do not laugh about. Why did that happen? Why did my marriage fall apart? Why did this diagnosis come? Why did our child make that choice? Why did this prayer go unanswered? Why does suffering continue? Why does God seem silent? If you have been alive long enough, you know how these questions multiply. They begin to add up until you feel as if you are carrying a small library of unanswered things. And somewhere in the middle of that library, a faithful person will wonder: “Why?”
Some Christians are afraid of that question. We worry that questioning God reveals a lack of faith. We think faithful people should always be calm, confident, and spiritually composed. So we tidy our prayers. We smooth out our words. We soften our anger. We disguise our disappointment. We take the sharp edges off our grief. We mean well when we say, “Everything happens for a reason,” when what we want to say is, “God, why did you allow this.” Why are we so timid to be honest with God?
The Bible shows the way. It is filled with people who ask God why. Job asked why. Jeremiah asked why. David asked why. Habakkuk asked why. The people of Israel asked why. Even Jesus asked why. In fact, the Bible contains so much lament that we might wonder whether biblical people ever had a pleasant afternoon.
Imagine being Job’s neighbor. You see him coming toward you, and you know this will not be a brief conversation. You cannot say, “How are you doing?” unless you have packed a lunch. Job is not going to answer, “Fine. Thank you.” Job has thirty-seven chapters of material ready. And to make matters worse, his friends come to comfort him. At first, they do something brilliant. They sit silently beside him for seven days. That may be the wisest pastoral care offered in the entire book. But then they begin talking. That is where the trouble starts. They explain Job’s suffering. They defend God. They offer theological theories. They suggest Job must have done something to deserve what happened. By the time they are finished, Job needs to be comforted because of the people who came to comfort him.
The book of Job teaches us something important: our first ministry is presence. What Job needed was not explanations. He needed people willing to sit beside him in the mystery. Sometimes the holiest thing we offer another person is not an answer. It is our presence.
Listen now to the beginning of Psalm 13: “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” Those are startling words. This is not polite religion. This is not a carefully constructed theological argument. This is not someone pretending everything is fine. The psalmist feels forgotten. Abandoned. Alone. And the psalmist says so.
“How long?” Not once, but four times in the opening verses. How long? (question) How long? (weary) How long? (protest) How long, O Lord? (near breaking) This is a person who has reached the end of patience and apparently assumes God needs the question repeated. Perhaps some of us understand that. “God, I know I mentioned this yesterday, and probably the day before, and most of last week, but I am bringing it up again.”
And yet notice something important. The psalmist did not walk away from God. The psalmist turns toward God. The complaint itself becomes his prayer. The question itself becomes his act of faith. We do not cry out to someone from whom we expect absolutely nothing. We cry out because the relationship still matters. We cry out because somewhere beneath the anger, beneath the grief, beneath the disappointment is the hope that someone is listening. “How long, O Lord?” means: “I still believe you are there.” “I still believe you hear me.” “I still believe this story is not finished.”
That is lament. Lament is grief spoken to God. Lament is not the abandonment of faith. It is a way of staying in the relationship when the answers have not come.
Many Christians imagine there are only two spiritual positions: faith or doubt, trust or unbelief, hope or despair. But Scripture offers another possibility. Lament. Lament stands in the difficult middle. Lament says: “I trust God enough to tell the truth.” “I believe enough to bring my pain.” “I hope enough to keep speaking, even when heaven seems silent.” Lament is not faithlessness. Lament is faith refusing to disappear. It is faith pounding on the door. It is faith saying, “I am still here, God. Where are you?”
Sometimes God works in ways that cannot be seen while they are happening. Like roots beneath winter soil. Above the ground, everything appears still. The branches are bare. The earth is hard. No flower opens. No green shoot appears. Yet beneath the surface, roots continue their hidden work. They hold. They reach. They gather what moisture the earth provides. They prepare for a spring they cannot yet prove is coming. Faith sometimes looks like that. Not certainty. Not explanation. Not triumphant answers. Simply holding in the dark.
The most astonishing lament in Scripture does not come from Job, Jeremiah, David, or the prophets. It comes from Jesus. As darkness covered the land, Jesus cried out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” By the time we reach that cry, there is no room for humor. Jesus is not speaking from a comfortable distance. He is not offering a lesson about suffering. He is suffering. He has been betrayed by one friend. Denied by another. Abandoned by many. Mocked by strangers. Wounded by the powers of the world. And from the cross, Jesus asks the question human beings have asked beside hospital beds and gravesides, on battlefields and in prison cells, and from empty chairs: “Why?”
Jesus does not say, “Everything makes sense.” He does not say, “I understand why this must hurt so much.” He does not deny the terror of the moment. He enters fully into it. He gives voice to the anguish of every person who has ever wondered whether God had turned away.
But listen closely to his words. “My God, my God. Why?” “My God.” His question rises from within the relationship. Even in the darkness, the relationship remains. Even in the anguish, Jesus reaches toward God. Even when he cannot feel the Father’s presence, he speaks the language of belonging: “My God.”
That may be one of the deepest forms of faith we will ever know. Not the faith that always understands. Not the faith that always feels strong. Not the faith that always receives an answer. It is the faith that says, through tears and clenched teeth: “My God.” The faith that cries out rather than turning away. The faith that brings the full weight of suffering into the presence of God. Jesus teaches us that faithfulness does not require the suppression of pain. Faithfulness means bringing that pain to our Creator.
Paul writes in Romans that there are times when we do not know how to pray as we ought. That feels true, doesn’t it? Sometimes grief is too deep. The questions are too complicated. The exhaustion is too heavy. The words that once helped us no longer fit. Sometimes all we have is a sigh. A tear. A silence. A “Why?” But Paul reminds us the Spirit intercedes when our sighs are too deep for words. What a mercy that is. God does not wait for us to compose the perfect prayer. God does not require eloquence. God does not grade our theology while we are struggling. When language fails, the Spirit carries what remains. The ache. The anger. The longing. The question.
Most of us think faith means finally finding the answer. But we learn through Scripture that faith is taking the next step before we have the whole map. Faith is walking the path while still carrying the question. Faith is saying, “I do not understand,” and still turning toward God. Faith is sitting beside someone else’s sorrow without rushing to explain it away. Faith is trusting that a sigh can become prayer when our words are gone.
The good news today is not that God will answer every why. The good news is that God does not abandon us inside the question. So bring your questions. Bring the ones that have followed you for years. Bring the ones you are almost afraid to say aloud. And when all you can manage is one small word—”Why?”—trust that for God, even that is a prayer.
Amen and Amen.
In My Words 