#BeingHuman. We carry a different set of questions now, because a full-scale war has rewritten our frame of reference by force. Suffering and trauma do that to people, and everything this war keeps producing has done it to us, so that the way we see the world and our own place in it no longer matches what it was. From that follows the difference in what we ask, since our questions have to do with holding on to an identity and continuing to work and minister as a human being in the image of God, and as a follower of the Way inside the Community of Hope.
Some people hear those questions as cynical or pessimistic, and it is worth saying plainly that we are trying to make sense of a world that has been turned upside down for us. Scripture is full of people who asked hard questions after suffering. Job asked God why He had permitted so much of it. David asked God why He was so far away at the moment he needed Him most. Jesus Himself asked, from the cross, why He had been forsaken. Were they cynics? Those are the questions of people struggling to understand why God allows suffering and war and a death toll of this size in our lives and in our country.
We ask difficult questions because the war rewrote our frame of reference, and we ask them knowing that we are not alone in it. God is with us through this war, including when He chooses to answer our questions and our prayers in ways we neither wanted nor expected. You are with us as well, the People of the Bridge and the Community of Hope, helping us understand and shape our questions about God, about ourselves and about the Mission that has not changed. Together we may find answers in His time, or we may not.
Here is my prayer today, on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus.
Dear Stranger, we walk with You today with heavy hearts, while we watch other people walking up from Emmaus toward Jerusalem with peace in their faces. The war has rewritten our frame of reference and we cannot make sense of it, so we carry many questions and need help knowing where to turn with them. We know that You are walking with us on this road out of the city of peace, in the middle of our pain, even when we fail to recognise Your face or notice that You are there. We trust that You understand our questions and will help us find the answers in Your own time, and that You may choose not to. Help us to be patient, and help us to trust Your goodness even when we cannot see it at all. Help us to remain part of Your Community of Hope on this road. Help us not to wound the people who love us among the People of the Bridge. Peace be with You too, Stranger.
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