A Mountain Too Hard to Climb

Ten days ago I spent a delightful afternoon with my twenty-year-old granddaughter, getting caught up on where she’s at in life and enjoying a bowl of Bombay soup and a vegan wrap. We ate in a small restaurant in Brooklin, a town just north and west of Oshawa. And I’d go back there any day; the food was delicious!

When I stood to leave, I noticed a large chalk board on the wall behind me. It was quite obvious that it was used to share wise thoughts and encouraging words with those who were enjoying their meal, but I had missed it while sitting with my back to it. That day the words read: Not every day is a good day. But every day has good in it. Find the good. And I stood in the middle of the floor for several seconds contemplating the thought behind those chalked words: There’s good in every day. Find the good…. Certainly I was having a good day, to be sure, and I immediately thought of the verse, This is the day the LORD has made; We will rejoice and be glad in it (Psalm 118:24).

But on my drive home, I couldn’t help wondering how difficult it is when one is faced with the very opposite kind of day that I had just enjoyed. A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, to be exact. No doubt, when Judith Voirst wrote the story about Alexander’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, her intention was to bring a smile when we read: He went to sleep with gum in his mouth and woke up with gum in his hair. I believe her book resulted in many successful attempts to combat Alexander’s bad day. Expressions such as, A bad day only lasts twenty-four hours. Or, Be a pineapple: stand tall, wear a crown and be sweet on the inside. Or, You’ve gotta have the bad days so you can love the good days.

But sometimes, just sometimes, words don’t help. Life presents the mountain that is just too hard to climb and you begin to ask unanswerable questions: If God is good, why is life so hard? Why did sixteen lives have to be taken in such an horrific crash that minutes on either side of it could have prevented it? Why were the lives of young men with limitless futures and a beloved coach snuffed out so tragically while another walked away with minor injuries? Why did ten people have to die in a senseless, deliberate act of violence and hatred on the streets of North Toronto? Why were the lives of a ninety-four-year-old woman, an eighty-year-old grandmother and a twenty-three-year-old university student needlessly snuffed out? How does one find the good in these days?

The questions are endless and the search for some answers is often peppered with anger, more often than not, toward God. Why was God so merciless and unloving? Why did He allow such horrific things to happen to good and innocent people? Why did He, either actively or passively, cause or allow so much grief? And then the personal one surfaces: Why would He desert me in the midst of my pain? If I dared to offer an answer to any of these questions, I would be pious and egotistical and would put myself on the same plane as God!

I, too, have struggled with the why questions throughout these overwhelming tragedies. I would be less than human if I didn’t. And I don’t know the answers. What I do know is that I will never walk in the shoes of those families inflicted with such unimaginable and debilitating pain. I will never be the parent of a hockey player that is no longer here or be part of the family of the single mom who leaves behind a seven-year-old son. I can’t begin to relate to their pain, nor can I begin to imagine the journey that lies ahead for those suffering such anguish. That I do know. I just don’t have any answers as to why.

Even so, should life hand me a mountain too hard to climb, all I can do is fervently pray that my faith and trust in God would sustain me, that I would have the strength to turn to Him because He would be all that I would have.

But the LORD stood with me and gave me strength.
2 Timothy 4:17

The LORD is near to the brokenhearted
and saves the crushed in spirit.
Psalm 34:18

Declares the Sovereign LORD …
“I will bind up that which was broken,
and will strengthen that which was sick.”
Ezekiel 34:16