Wonderstruck (5 page)

But Leif had been noticing some disturbing symptoms: namely, that I felt crummy more days than I felt strong. I’d developed a bright red spot in my right eye that the ophthalmologist’s prescriptions couldn’t alleviate, everyday scratches and scrapes were taking longer to heal, and I’d been bleeding for months.

“What if all these symptoms are all connected?” he asked.

“That’s silly,” I protested. “I’m fine.”

As hard as I tried to muster the forgetfulness of Dory, the words hung suspended in my mind.

My appointment with the physician arrived. After a short discussion, she confessed, “Something is wrong, but I don’t know what it is. You need to see a specialist.”

She failed to offer the answer or the reassuring words I longed for. The most highly recommended doctor in our area
didn’t have an opening for weeks. I seesawed between hope and despair with each passing day. Online research only expanded my fears.

The meeting with the specialist included a physical exam and blood work performed in-office. When the doctor returned, she spoke all too familiar words: “Something is wrong, but I don’t know what it is.”

“Do I have cancer?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “You need to go see the doctor who writes the textbook on this.”

Despite a personal call from the doctor, the super-specialist’s first available date was more than a month out. I left the office feeling hollow and tinny as if everything inside was vacuumed away. When I returned home, I crawled into bed where I tossed and turned until I lay sweaty and laboring for breath.

I trudged through the next few days trying to hold together some shred of sanity, some peanut of productivity. Then the phone rang. A dear friend had died unexpectedly. I felt as if I’d been battered by life then sucker punched. I couldn’t help but wonder why.

Any one of the events—transmission repair, house flooding, financial pressures, health issues, or death of a loved one—was challenging yet manageable, but when they all aligned together
in such a short time, I found myself overpowered by the shock and awe.

That’s when I collapsed on my kitchen floor and rolled to my back, stretching my hands above the top of my head. Crumbs, like sand, ground against my limbs. Pressed against the hardwood flooring, I felt the presence of God’s Spirit—that very thing I’d been asking for—grip me. I discovered a holy stanza emerging from the recesses of my soul. My lips began trembling. My eyes searched the ceiling as the whisper of these words ascended from the core of my being.

God is good
.

God is on the throne
.

Breathe in
.

Breathe out
.
¹

I finished the refrain then returned to the beginning.

Some say it’s impossible to rediscover something for the first time. Maybe they’re right. But in that moment I felt as if these simple truths were familiar and foreign all at the same time.

In those dozen syllables, I discovered I wasn’t only speaking to God; he was speaking to me—anchoring me to the reality of his immanence. That’s when God filled me with the wonder of his presence. God wasn’t just with me on the kitchen floor; he had been with me all along. God’s presence had never left. I had been so focused on the areas of pain, the problems that seemed to have no end, that I was missing out on the nearness of God in the moment.

The wonder of God’s presence captured me. A ripple of peace brushed against my soul. A wave of joy crashed over me that I could not contain. Rolling laughter erupted from my belly: I found myself delighting in the invisible and unexplainable assurance that God was near. For the first time in months, I felt alive. In a jubilant response, laid out on the kitchen floor, I traced an upward arc with my hands until my knuckles bumped then pushed my arms back down toward my sides. My legs joined the cadence. My limbs swung in rhythm as I offered God a spontaneous act of worship by making snow angels on the kitchen floor.

I knew I looked ridiculous. My response made no sense. Laughter marks the last response a sane person makes to pain. But the wonder I discovered that day is that when God feels a million miles away, the knowledge of his presence allows us to laugh when everything else says we should be crying. In such a moment, I couldn’t help but respond in worship.

Wide awake to the presence of God, I realized I had been so focused on asking why a good God allowed bad things to happen that I was missing out on the nearness of God all along. In becoming preoccupied with the
why
, I was missing the
who
.

Over the following days, I began returning to Scripture to find God anew. I discovered that the subtle but significant shift taking place in my life echoes throughout the Bible.

While taking care of the sheep of his father-in-law Jethro, Moses stumbles on a fiery bush that refuses to burn up. When he turns aside to find out why the shrub isn’t reduced to ashes, he encounters the holy
who
that changes his life and the history of the Israelites.
²

God instructs Moses to demand that Pharaoh, the ruler of Egypt, set the Israelites free. Moses obeys but becomes disappointed and disillusioned at the response. Instead of granting liberation, Pharaoh doubles the workload. Moses bombards God with a series of why questions: “O Lord,
why
have You brought harm to this people?
Why
did You ever send me?”
³

Instead of answering Moses’ questions of
why
, God responds to Moses’ questions with
who
. Just as God revealed himself in increasing measure to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, God promises to reveal himself to Moses and the Israelites. He fulfills the commitment with spectacular fanfare. Water becomes blood. Insects multiply. Clouds thunder. Hail descends. Darkness falls. The Red Sea splits. Manna appears. Water pours from a rock. And that’s only the beginning.

The winding dusty path from Egypt to the promised land proves to be far more than a much-needed shift in geography or transition from slavery to liberation; the great exodus is a journey in discovering the presence of God anew. Abounding love. Generous provision. Exceptional patience. Miraculous power.

Sporting chapped lips and sunburnt noses, the people of God discover the nature of God with each passing mile. They
grumble ten thousand complaints and ask unending
why
questions. They even endure consequences, some harsh at times, because of their disobedience and lack of faith. Yet God still meets them in the
who
.

This idea of God answering our
why
questions with the holy
who
isn’t just seen in the history of the Israelites but is also displayed in the story of a wildly successful businessman named Job who, in a single day, loses everything.

A rogue storm smashes the home where Job’s children gather for a party. A bolt of lightning strikes the barn nearby, leaving all his sheep and shepherds trapped in a fire. With smoke still billowing, looters arrive on the scene. They cart away all of Job’s remaining livestock. By the time law enforcement and rescue workers arrive, everything is gone. Almost everyone is dead.

The calamities continue. Job’s body breaks out in painful boils. Sitting in the dusty ashes of a life destroyed, he scrapes his skin with smashed pottery shards to alleviate the pain. Job prays to die, but his broken heart refuses to stop beating. Looking into the eyes of the woman he loves, he finds himself longing for a droplet of hope, a splash of encouragement. Instead, she advises him to curse God and grab a noose. The responses of Job’s friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, prove even more disheartening. Though the trio of theological quacks can’t pinpoint which sin Job has committed to cause all of this, Job maintains his innocence.

Instead of responding in anger frosted with bitterness, Job
declares no luggage racks are allowed on the hearse. He came into the world with nothing; he will return with nothing. Regardless of what he gives or takes away, Job proclaims that God still deserves praise.
⁴

Job’s response is curious.

He doesn’t accuse God of behaving badly but peppers him with dozens of
why
questions. Why do you “kick me around like an old tin can?”
⁵
he asks without apology. “Why did I have to be born if this is the life you meant for me? Why do you bother keeping me alive?”
⁶

The
why
dam breaks, tearful inquiries gush forth. “Why do you treat me like your enemy?”
⁷
Job asks. “Why don’t you forgive me and move on?”
⁸
“Why don’t you stop picking on me?”
⁹
“Why do you seem to ignore the wrongs of our world?”
¹⁰
In the process of calling on God for answers, Job’s lament gives voice to the great whys that have plagued humanity throughout history.

He wrestles through some of life’s darkest, most difficult issues. Three insufferable friends, along with an unwelcome latecomer named Elihu, weigh in at every turn. Their all-too-often barbed, coldhearted responses to Job reveal that they’re more concerned with figuring out theologically what happened to him than with extending compassion. The conversation spins around issues of sin, justice, sovereignty, and mercy until God appears on the scene.

Considering all the forms God could have selected that fateful day, with burning bushes and talking donkeys not
beyond reason, I find great comfort that God chooses to pull back the curtains of heaven and reveal himself in the form of a whirlwind. After a man’s life has been blown apart by hurricane-force gusts and storm-tossed by well-meaning friends, God chooses to appear to him in the midst
of
a storm
as
a storm, reminding us that none of life’s downpours happen apart from God’s power or permission.

God assumes the form of a windstorm to deliver one of the most spectacular speeches in all of Scripture. The tenor with which God breaks the silence makes us feel like he’s been holding back, holding his breath for this moment. God poses some of the finest and most fantastic questions ever asked.

Though Job asks
why
, God answers
who
. “Who developed the blueprints for the earth?”
¹¹
he asks. “Who laid the cornerstone and poured out the foundations of creation?”
¹²
“Who carved the canyons to channel the rain?”
¹³
“Who keeps count of the clouds?”
¹⁴
“Who ensures the baby birds are well fed?
¹⁵
“Who sets the wild donkey free?”
¹⁶

The series of questions reverberates in the soul like an ethereal ballad. The divine song raises Job’s eyes from the downward and inward to the upward and outward. God asks, “Have you ever commanded the morning?”
¹⁷
and “Do you know where light dwells?”
¹⁸
Job’s eyes open to the wonder of God’s presence all around him.

The work of God’s hand is heralded throughout creation and manifested in its many creatures. God’s presence is evident
in the groan of labor pains, the sweet scent of a newborn. God’s handiwork is displayed in the cresting of shadows and the damp chill of morning dew. The power of God can be heard in the crackle of hail, the crash of an ocean wave, the groan of gusting wind. The nearness of God is exhibited in the daily dawn-inspired rooster’s crow, the rhythmic pacing of seasons: all of creation testifies to the power and presence of God.

In the wake of such a sublime soliloquy, Job offers a final, frail question, “What else can I say?”
¹⁹
Since childhood, Job had listened to stories of God’s glory and mercy and holiness and wrath. At dawn and dusk, on more days than Job could remember, he paused to admire the bright velvety colors displayed on the horizon. Even as a younger man, he watched in awe whenever one of his livestock gave birth.

Now Job hears and experiences God for himself.

After that encounter, his perspective recalibrates from a focus on the
why
to the
who
, all of his questions scuttle off, replaced by the knowledge that God had graced him with his presence. The enormity of God is revealed. Everything becomes right-sized in Job’s world. Still covered in soot and scabs, Job confesses something he has known all along deep down inside: God can do anything and everything, and no one and nothing can upset the plans of God.