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As I recently prepared a meal for a family after the birth of their fifth child, my husband busily prepared to get on a plane the next morning to attend a funeral. There he would mourn with a family suddenly broken by the tragic loss of their six-year-old girl.
It was a stark contrast between gift and grief. To one the Lord gave, and from one the Lord took away, and there was no evident reason why. Perhaps the Preacher of Ecclesiastes would have chimed in with these wise words: “In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him” (Eccl. 7:14).
The children of God need not blush as they offer humble and sincere thanksgiving to God for His earthly blessings: a healthy baby born, a successful business, a child’s professing faith, and, yes, even the simple prosperity of a family walk on a summer evening followed by ice cream cones on the front porch. Receiving and enjoying these gifts with a grateful eye toward the Giver is commended and acceptable.
But sometimes the Giver takes, and these painful and often sudden moments can stop the believer in his tracks. That is exactly what the Preacher would have him do—pause and consider. In other words, stop, slow down, and think about what you are beholding. The God who opened His hands wide with provision, protection, and pleasure—even just yesterday—is the very same God who has decreed this particular pain and professes no obligation to explain Himself.
The believer is perplexed, but the Preacher says, “The perplexity is the point.” The pain will no doubt serve God’s good purposes in the days to come, but the present glaring perplexity has a purpose as well. When the baffled believer cries, “This doesn’t make sense!” the Preacher asks, “What does that tell you about God?” To this he must reply, “He is unlike me.”
It’s the same truth that the Preacher is getting at in verse 13 when he asks, “Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked?” The answer, of course, is no one, because He “is the Lord, and there is no other” (Isa. 45:5). The perplexity of pain and loss is meant to make God’s children stare their creatureliness in the face and hold it up against the “otherness” of their eternal and infinite God. The truth that God’s ways are not our ways (55:8)—that He is unlike us—is the jolting truth that keeps us from trying to fully wrap our minds around every bright or bitter providence.
In Job’s unfathomable loss, this was the truth that brought him to his knees as he declared, “Blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). The Creator’s way with His created is a profound mystery of giving and taking. Will this truth prompt us to wince or to worship?