in search of answers

I've been struggling with a bit of confusion lately. Still, there is no grand revelation or wrapping a solution up in a cute little package, but I am ok with that. See, I've decided what I found to be true soon after my dad died is still true. I do not have all the answers. I will not have all the answers. I am owed no answers. They are not mine to have. After all, the Word says "as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:9)

Lately I've been made more aware of the belief that people who aren't healed of disease (to stay here on Earth, that is) are not healed because there was a lack of faith in the ability of God to do so. I'm here to say I fully and totally believe God is able to do all things, anything, create all things, sustain all things, calm a storm, cause a sea to part, save, heal, restore and on and on. I believe the bible to be His inspired Word and that in it we can find proof of miracle after miracle He performed or allowed others to perform. I believe miracles still happen today. I believed He could heal my dad. But honestly, I sensed that He wouldn't. I can't say why I sensed it, but I can say it was not by a lack of faith, but an understanding I received. So, when I could find the words to pray during that time, my prayers were for freedom from the intense pain Dad was in, or the constant nausea, but mostly that God's will would be done. Usually I had no words of my own, so I begged the Spirit to pray for me.

So to know that some would think the reason my dad was not healed to remain alive here is because we didn't believe God could do it, is honestly a bit upsetting to me. Maybe I'm just selfish, or whiny, or maybe I just want some comfort. I've been searching and asking about this. And here's some of what I've found, or rather what God has led me to. It simply cannot be coincidental that as I need some direction on this specific idea I've stumbled on other blogs or have been sent a daily devotional that spoke to this particular wondering.

Look at what a mentor sent my way after I asked her what she thought. Isaiah 57:1-2 says:

Good people pass away;
the godly often die before their time.
But no one seems to care or wonder why.
No one seems to understand
that God is protecting them from the evil to come.
For those who follow godly paths
will rest in peace when they die.

And 2 Corinthians 5:6-8 says this:

Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. We live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.

These passages reaffirm my belief that my dad was healed, he is healed, and in the most thorough way because he's Home. Shouldn't we all "prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord?"

A few days ago I came across this blog. This family delivered a baby who had already passed on to heaven. Here are a few quotes I found there:

"Let us greet the day which assigns each of us to his own home, which snatches us from this place and sets us free from the snares of the world, and restores us to paradise and the kingdom. Anyone who has been in foreign lands longs to return to his own native land... We regard paradise as our native land."

- Cyprian

"When I heard that I was in the wrong place... my soul sang for joy, like a bird in spring. I knew now... why I could feel homesick at home."

- G.K. Chesterton

"In the truest sense, Christian pilgrims have the best of both worlds. We have joy whenever this world reminds us of the next, and we take solace whenever it does not."

-C.S. Lewis

"I have a longing for the world above where multitudes sing the great song,

for my soul was never created to love the dust of the earth."

-"Calvary's Anthem" from The Valley of Vision

So I've come full circle, having no definite answers, but knowing again that answers are not mine to have. That what is mine to have is faith, trust, hope, love and a knowing deep within that God has the answers and I'll come to know them if and when He deems it. Allison sent me a great devotional yesterday from Carolina Chapel that said "we cannot always change our circumstances, but we can place ourselves in God’s presence, so that His strength and perspective sustain us. There is a set time for you to question things, to not understand. Just know there is also a set time for your answer to come."

And finally, (as you breathe a sigh of relief that this post might just have an end!), in the April 29th devotional of My Utmost for His Highest Oswald Chambers writes:

"To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sign of sadness, it should be rather an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God... Leave the whole thing to Him, it is gloriously uncertain how He will come in, but He will come."