For All the Days that End in Why?
Psalm 22:1
Let’s begin today with
A short quiz:
It consists of 4 questions and will tell you whether you are qualified to be a professional manager. The questions are NOT difficult.
1. How do you put a giraffe into a refrigerator?
The correct answer is:
OPEN THE REFRIGERATOR, PUT IN THE GIRAFFE, AND CLOSE THE DOOR.
This question tests whether you tend to do simple things in an overly complicated way.
2. How do you put an elephant into a refrigerator?
Did you say, Open the refrigerator, put in the elephant, and close the
refrigerator? Wrong Answer!
Correct Answer:
OPEN THE REFRIGERATOR, TAKE OUT THE GIRAFFE,
PUT IN THE ELEPHANT AND CLOSE THE DOOR.
This tests your ability to think through the repercussions of your previous actions.
3. The Lion King is hosting an animal conference.
All the animals attend...except one.
Which animal does not attend?
Correct Answer:
THE ELEPHANT.
The elephant is in the refrigerator. You just put him in there. This tests your memory.
Okay, even if you did not answer the first three questions correctly, you still have one more chance to show your true abilities.
4. There is a river you must cross but it is used by crocodiles, and you do not have a boat. How do you manage it?
Correct Answer:
YOU JUMP INTO THE RIVER AND SWIM ACROSS.
Have you not been listening? All the crocodiles are attending the Animal Meeting. This tests whether you learn quickly from your mistakes.
According to Anderson Consulting World-wide, around 90% of the professionals they tested got all questions wrong, but many pre-schoolers got several correct answers.
Anderson Consulting says this conclusively disproves the theory that most professionals have the brains of a four-year-old.
Today we are going to delve into why so many days end in “why” and what should we do when “why” fills our days and our minds.
Psalm 22:1
1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?
(NIV)
We enter this life questioning, “Why?”
Why did I have to leave the comfortable place I was living? Why are they shining bright lights in my eyes? Why am I being poked and prodded, rubbed and wrapped up?
Why do people talk to me with unintelligible language? Why is it that every time I get this diaper warm they replace it?
We are born with a burning desire to know the “whys” of life? Why do birds and butterflies fly when I cannot?
The why question continues through our school years. Did you ever wonder why you had to learn math?
Does anyone have a compelling response to the penetrating question: “Why do we observe daylight savings time?”
Why is there so much pain and suffering in the world? Why do I have to endure more of it than others?
We surround our lives with “WHY”.
In case you haven’t noticed, every day ends in “y”! I’ve even known many days that ended in “why”, haven’t you?
Perhaps you are one of those who gets an email, promising that if you’ll just send it to ten people, you’ll receive a miracle by this time tomorrow! Like this guy…
He’s still waiting for a miracle, an answer!
IS GOD REQUIRED TO ANSWER
OUR “WHY” QUESTIONS?
A man went to a barbershop to have his hair cut and his beard trimmed. As the barber began to work, they began to have a good conversation. They talked about so many things and various subjects.
When they eventually touched on the subject of God, the barber said: "I don’t believe that God exists."
"Why do you say that?" asked the customer.
"Well, you just have to go out in the street to realize that God doesn’t
exist. Tell me, if God exists, would there be so many sick people?
Would there be abandoned children? If God existed, there would be neither suffering nor pain. I can’t imagine a loving a God who would allow all of these things."
The customer thought for a moment, but didn’t respond because he
didn’t want to start an argument. The barber finished his job and the customer left the shop. Just after he left the barbershop, he saw a man in the street with long, stringy, dirty hair and an untrimmed beard. He looked dirty and unkempt.
The customer turned back and entered the barber shop again and he said to the barber: "You know what? Barbers do not exist."
"How can you say that?" asked the surprised barber. "I am here, and I am a barber. And I just worked on you!"
"No!" the customer exclaimed. "Barbers don’t exist because if they did, there would be no people with dirty long hair and untrimmed beards, like that man outside."
"Ah, but barbers DO exist! What happens is, people do not come to me."
"Exactly!"- affirmed the customer. "That’s the point! God, too, DOES exist! What happens, is, people don’t go to Him and do not look for Him.
Hebrews 11:6
6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
(NIV)
Reward is sure, but not necessarily answers.
WHY WOULD YOU THINK THAT
GOD SHOULD TELL YOU WHY?
When Frank Maguire was senior vice president of Federal Express, he had a pet project that he was hoping to adopt as part of the yearly budget. He had talked to the company’s chairman, Fred Smith, several times unsuccessfully. One afternoon Maguire stuck his head in Smith’s office and said, "Do you have a minute? I need to talk to you." Fred Smith said, "Is it about that same thing?" Before Maguire could answer, Smith said, "Come over here." Smith got up from his chair and said to Maguire, "Sit in my chair." Smith moved around to the front of the desk and had a seat in the guest chair. Then he said, "Tell me one more time why we should do this project." Maguire couldn’t speak. His boss said, "It looks a lot different from that side of the desk, doesn’t it?" Later Maguire said, "It was the most profound lesson in management I ever received, because what looks so clear to one employee doesn’t always look that way to the chairman of the board. When I sat in the chair I saw the financial community, the customers, the budget department, and I realized how overwhelming it was."
God sees the bigger picture. He knows tomorrow better that we know yesterday! And he can be trusted.
GOD ALWAYS WORKS WITHIN THE WWW:
HIS WORD
HIS WILL
HIS WAY
God has given us His precious Word.
God has a predetermined will.
God works in a predictable way.
The WWW ALWAYS AGREE with each other.
God’s Word reveals His Will and His Way of acting and reacting with mankind. God’s Will will never go against His Word or His Way. God’s Way, how He does things, remains the same.
Numbers 23:19
19 God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?
(NIV)
James 1:17
17 Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.
(NIV)
One could say that God is pretty set in His ways. That’s a great thing because in one place He said:
Malachi 3:6
6 "I the LORD do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.
(NIV)
If God changed with the whim of man, it would spell doom for us all.
Consider this: if God decided to change His mind every time we whined a “why”, how would you know how God would react when you prayed tomorrow?
The foundation of trust is DEPENDABILITY.
When everything else is changing, God is still constant!
Hebrews 13:8
8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
(NIV)
So why do we ask why?
Asking why is normal! Even Jesus asked, “Why?”
Matthew 27:46
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
(NIV)
God did not even answer His only Son when Jesus asked. In all the times that the question “why” is asked in the Scripture, God never answers the question!
THERE IS NOTHING WRONG
WITH ASKING WHY,
BUT DO NOT EXPECT GOD
TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION!
Psalm 22:2
2 Every day I call to you, my God, but you do not answer. Every night you hear my voice, but I find no relief.
(NLT)
Maybe we could not handle the answer to our whining why’s. Maybe the answer would only give rise to more questions.
Maybe FATHER really does know best!
Maybe instead of “WHY”,
we should just say, “YES!”
The morning before Super Bowl XL, hundreds gathered in fourth-floor ballroom at the Marriott Renaissance in Detroit, Michigan to cheer New York Jets running back Curtis Martin who received the Athletes in Action Bart Starr Award. They thought they were there to cheer and to eat a great breakfast. But God surprised them all as the featured speaker that day spoke. That speaker was Indianapolis Colts Head Coach Tony Dungy.
He told them he was going to talk about lessons he had learned from his three sons. The crowd fell silent. Then Dungy spoke. And although this was a breakfast - and although at many such events speakers speak over the clinking of glasses and murmurs from semi-interested listeners - for most of the 15 minutes the room was silent except for Dungy’s voice.
He spoke of his middle son, Eric, who he said shares his competitiveness and who is focused on sports "to where it’s almost a problem." He spoke of his youngest son, Jordan, who has a rare congenital condition which causes him not to feel pain.
"He feels things, but he doesn’t get the sensation of pain," Dungy said. The lessons learned from Jordan, Tony Dungy said, are many. "That sounds like it’s good at the beginning, but I promise you it’s not,"
Dungy said. "We’ve learned a lot about pain in the last five years we’ve had Jordan. We’ve learned some hurts are really necessary for kids. Pain is necessary for kids to find out the difference between what’s good and what’s harmful."
Jordan, Dungy said, loves cookies. "Cookies are good," Dungy said, "but in Jordan’s mind, if they’re good out on the plate, they’re even better in the oven. He will go right in the oven when my wife’s not looking, reach in, take the rack out, take the pan out, burn his hands and eat the cookies and burn his tongue and never feel it. He doesn’t know that’s bad for him." Jordan, Dungy said, "has no fear of anything, so we constantly have to watch him."
The lesson learned, Dungy said, is simple.
"You get the question all the time, ’Why does the Lord allow pain in your life? Why do bad things happen to good people? If God is a God of love, why does he allow these hurtful things to happen?’’’ Dungy said.
"We’ve learned that a lot of times because of that pain, that little temporary pain, you learn what’s harmful. You learn to fear the right things. Pain sometimes lets us know we have a condition that needs to be healed. Pain inside sometimes lets us know that spiritually we’re not quite right and we need to be healed and that God will send that healing agent right to the spot. Sometimes, pain is the only way that will turn us as kids back to the Father."
Finally, he spoke of James. James Dungy, Tony Dungy’s oldest son, died three days before Christmas. As he did while delivering James’ eulogy in December, Dungy on Saturday spoke of him eloquently and steadily, speaking of lessons learned and of the positives taken from experience. "It was tough, and it was very, very painful, but as painful as it was, there were some good things that came out of it," Dungy said.
Dungy spoke at the funeral of regretting not hugging James the last time he saw him, on Thanksgiving of last year. "I met a guy the next day after the funeral," Dungy said. "He said, ’I was there. I heard you talking. I took off work today. I called my son. I told him I was taking him to the movies. We’re going to spend some time and go to dinner.’ That was a real, real blessing to me."
Dungy said he has gotten many letters since James’ death relaying similar messages. "People heard what I said and said, ’Hey, you brought me a little closer to
my son,’ or, ’You brought me a little closer to my daughter,’’’ Dungy said. "That is a tremendous blessing."
Dungy also said some of James’ organs were donated through donors programs.
"We got a letter back two weeks ago that two people had received his
corneas, and now they can see,’’ Dungy said. "That’s been a tremendous blessing."
Dungy also said he received a letter from a girl from the family’s church in Tampa. She had known James for many years, Dungy said. She went to the funeral because she knew James.
"When I saw what happened at funeral, and your family and the celebration and how it was handled, that was the first time I realized there had to be a God," Dungy said the girl wrote. "I accepted Christ into my life and my life’s been different since that day."
Added Dungy, "That was an awesome blessing, so all of those things kind of made me realize what God’s love is all about."
Dungy also said he was asked often how he was able to return to the Colts so quickly after James’ death. James died on December 22, and Dungy returned to the team one week later. Dungy said the answer was simple.
"People asked me, ’How did you recover so quickly?"’’ Dungy said. "I’m not totally recovered. I don’t know that I ever will be. It’s still very, very painful, but I was able to come back because of something one of my good Christian friends said to me after the funeral.
"He said, ’You know James accepted Christ into his heart, so you know he’s in heaven, right?’ I said, ’Right, I know that.’ He said, ’So, with all you know about heaven, if you had the power to bring him back now, would you?’
When I thought about it, I said, ’No, I wouldn’t. I would not want him back with what I know about heaven.’
"That’s what helped me through the grieving process. Because of Christ’s spirit in me, I had that confidence that James is there, at peace with the Lord, and I have the peace of mind in the midst of something that’s very, very painful.
"That’s my prayer today, that everyone in this room would know the same thing."
Life is not meant to be understood, any more than God can be fully understood.
But for all the days that end in “WHY?”, GOD IS GOOD!
