So...why does he keep giving me rocks?

What father among you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone.. [Luke 11:11]

I was driving down the road between work and home. The road wasn’t as filled with monsters made of steel an rubber as it usually is during my commute. Then again, I wasn’t driving home as I usually did either.

It was somewhere around 10:30am.
La was sick, and I didn’t know why.
She was sick, and I didn’t know when she would be well.

After we returned from South Korea, or maybe some time before we left that country, my wife became ill. At first we thought it was travelers’ diarrhea [which is what I apparently had]. When she woke up on September 12 with a fever of 102.9 [I said .8 in an earlier post, she tells me it was .9], it all seemed to be a little more serious.

Over the course of the week, she frequented doctors’ offices more than any healthy person should. By the end of the week [Friday, September 15] she was in the hospital with an IV slowly dripping nutrients and antibiotics into her blood stream. Sometimes she would cry. The only thing she wanted was to be well and the only thing she seemed to complain about was the difficulty she had sleeping with an IV in her arm.

During a few of my many trips to the hospitals, to her room, to our home…I had a lot of time to reflect and pray. I asked God, very frankly, “Why are you giving me stones?” I asked Him about Eric. I asked Him about my wife. I asked Him about so many times where I had asked and the answer always came as, “No.”

You might be on the end that says, “God was using the, ‘No’ as an element of teaching.”
You might be on the end that asks, “Why is God, the good Father, giving me stones…too?”
Doctrinally, I can tell you why.
Experientially, I am hard pressed.

If you know me, I don’t try to base much on experience either.

One post we came to in the road held an arrow. Another held a mirror. The one with the arrow seemed to be the easiest to look at but made me so angry because I always came to think that it oversimplified the problem. The post with the mirror was so difficult to look at because it reminded me of how unfit I was. When I looked at the arrow I didn’t have to think about my needs, I only needed to walk. When I looked into the mirror, my needs were made immediately apparent. It hurt to look into the mirror, but the answer is what I needed so much more.

When I looked at Laura in her hospital bed, I thought about how impoverished my soul is. I thought about how much it has been starved from the substance of Christ and the character of God. I thought about how poor of a leader I had been in our relationship and how far from a picture of Christ and the Church our marriage was.

Then, I prayed more boldly then I ever have before.

My heart holds not the belief that God will make me healthy and monetary wealthy through faith. I think that belief neglects the millions of Christians who live in developing countries who are starving to death – those who seemingly have no hope, or health, or wealth.

What I was reminded of in the mirror, what I was reminded of by my wife’s sickness, and what enabled me to pray as I did was the still small voice that reminded me that Christ’s blood – God’s blood – is really sufficient.

Over the course of 4 days, Laura’s health increased significantly. I do not attribute this to my prayers; I do attribute this to God’s mercy. When people ask about Laura, I tell them that God has been merciful to us because I believe that to be true. He was merciful to draw me in as a child, to show me what sort of putrid wretch I was and to remind me of what a cherished son and heir I am. He was merciful to make Laura well in a fairly quick manner despite the foul-ups of her respective nurses. He was merciful not to strike me down for my disrespect in yelling at him as I drove alone in my truck.

He was merciful to show me that the easy answer is not always the right one.