What do you do to keep from panic in the midst of an immediate crisis? When it is going from bad to worse, and everything seems to be out of your control, and there is no one you can turn to for help?
It is fairly normal to turn to God for help (there are no atheists in a foxhole). But how do you turn to God?
This past week I heard the reactions of two people to a situation like this. Both situations seemed to be matters of life and death. They both reacted in a similar way. Each person repeated to herself words of comfort, familiar words of Scripture or verses of a spiritual song.
When a situation is out of control and the mind seems to be losing control of itself, it is usually impossible to compose a prayer any longer or more intricate than “God help me!” So the mind often latches on to words that can be said or sung over and over again. In both of the cases I heard about this week, it worked. Each person made it through the crisis without falling into panic, each was strengthened and encouraged by a sense of God’s presence mediated through the familiar words.
Now suppose you are not in a crisis but in a chronic situation where your suffering seems to have little hope of easing and your ability to control your life seems to be slipping away. You have tried or dismissed all the well-meaning suggestions of others and are out of options. In that situation, how do you keep from falling into despair?
One of the common ways that Christians attempt to manage this despair is through a belief that God is in control and that there is a reason for everything. So whatever suffering they experience has a reason that will someday be revealed. In this life or the next, they will understand why their ultimate good demands their current pain. This can work to keep a person from falling into despair; and it does, at times. But it comes at a cost. And it comes with a danger
The cost comes from attributing suffering to God’s will, from believing that God is causing the pain or God is refusing to alleviate it. The image of God becomes distorted and the assessment of the situation is narrowed. When we image reasons why God might bring suffering on us we can begin to see God as vindictive or judgmental. Assuming that God is failing to alleviate our pain can lead to an image of God as unconcerned or uncaring. But in fact God is gracious and abounding in love.
Our assessment of our situation can be narrowed when we assign the ultimate cause for our suffering to God. We might begin to ignore the proximate causes of our suffering and even fail to take responsibility for ways in which we have caused or have increased our own pain. Making God responsible for our situation can keep us from seeing viable ways forward, actions we could take to make things better.
Aside from these costs, there is a more basic danger facing us when we try to manage despair with a belief that God is in control and has a reason for the suffering we are experiencing. Thinking this way pushes God’s help into the future, maybe even the very distant future, to the time when God reveals the reasons for the pain. We pray and ask for help. And as help gets postponed we pray and ask for understanding God’s reasons. As the understanding is postponed God becomes more a God of the future and less a God of the present. So if God is experienced in the present, it is primarily as the one who upholds our faith and stiffens our endurance.
The danger, of course, in focusing on God’s blessings in the future is that we miss God’s blessing in the present, God’s presence with us. The great promise of Jesus at the end of the Gospel of Matthew is, “See, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” And “always” always includes now. And “always” lasts as long as any bad stretch we may experience. God is with us. And God is with us no matter how chaotic things seem, even when we sense no control. There is one thing we can always trust God to be in control of: God’s ability to be with us. And there is one reason God has for coming to be with us: it is the deep desire of God’s heart.
Those two women at the beginning of this post testify to experiencing God’s presence with them in the midst of crisis, and they testify to the goodness of that experience. May we all experience God’s presence in times of crisis and in times of chronic suffering, in bad times and in good.
