Why God? Our Hometown Question

This post has been a long time coming...

On this day nine months ago, I stood on the loading dock at Cookeville Performing Arts Center. Oh, what a longtime dream that had been; a persistent hope that had never let go of me, and I recall telling my ten-year-old self as I sat in the audience that one day I would work on that stage. Today, I wonder what that little girl would have said had she known what else that day would bring.

In Tennessee we often leap from winter right into summer, so that evening was warm for early March. The sun was setting and there was a pink glow over the West Side. Few cars were rolling down Walnut, only the occasional passerby, usually someone whose cargo area was filled with someone else's cleaned up debris. The Cookeville that I looked out over on March 8th was not the one that had been only a few days before. Every member of the Upper Cumberland remembers March 3rd. The EF-4 tornado was marked one of the worst, most destructive days in Cookeville history. It left people homeless, injured beyond complete recovery, and took the lives of19 of Cookeville's citizens.

The beginning of the next week brought a beautiful Sunday night and I had just returned from saying goodbye to a dear friend whose funeral I had never imagined attending. Numb, yet fully aware of my longtime dream coming true, I remember halting on the loading dock, the strange peace of Cookeville, Tennessee capturing me. We were preparing for a moment that I and my dearest friends had been anticipating for months - a joy that we had so long-awaited that I wondered at how it would mingle with our town's drowning happiness. My emotions had run dry, they had been tugged and stretched in every direction so that I was instantly grabbed by the smallest notice of peace. Rather than be shoved by sorrow into anger and then back at sorrow again, the peace of what was before me became all-consuming.

It had rained off and on for weeks, but since the tornado, we had seen some of the best weather to be had all year. On the days leading up to my friend's funeral, I remember thinking how thankful I should be for this glorious weather - how I ought to have been thanking God for giving those poor people who had lost their homes a chance to save what they could.

But I couldn't thank Him... I was angry.

Why was the weather so perfect now? Why was the sky so still and the breeze so easy? Why now, a few hours later, did the earth shine so brilliantly over the leveled destruction where so many had lost their lives? I didn't realize until that moment on the dock how truly mad I was at God, and then I was consumed by guilt. How dare I? How dare I blame the One who had saved me? If the Lord never did anything else for me but to die for my sins, shouldn't that be enough? Why was I so greedy? I knew it wasn't His doing, the tornado had been a part of a broken world made that way by sinners like me; how did I dare to be angry at the One who had rescued me from it?

I closed my eyes and inhaled the breeze; I put that thought out of my mind. I was not going to be angry at God!

I began to think of my friend, of how she had loved Cookeville; of how this perfect night would have made her smile; of how she would have been one of those people, driving down the road, toeing other's wreckage in an effort to help. I could see her shaking her head at me and my emotions, chuckling and then smiling because she had them too. All that week I had worried over her, cried over her loss and the way in which she had left us without warning or chance to say goodbye. I was so wrapped up in what had been and in what could have been, but looking out over those familiar streets, so overcome with a peace from God for which there are not words, I suddenly knew that she was okay. We would see her again.

As a writer, I often describe people's emotions leaving them - they drained, they fell away, they changed into something different; well it was not until that moment that I really knew what it was to have a burden fall away and emotions alter in an instant. That peace, given to me in spite of my anger, had washed me of it...for the moment.

The following days I consider a couple of the best days of my life so far. That dream that 10-year-old me had imagined so long ago came true while I was surrounded by loved ones and the ability to see our God work in magnificent ways, but we all know what happened shortly afterward. Spring break hit Cookeville with welcome time off - time needed to continue cleanup, but what followed was almost as much of a tragedy as the tornado. COVID-19.

No time to mourn. No time to get back to life as normal. No distracting yourself from grief. Instead, our nation was shoved into shutdown. Now, I have no desire to see this post become political because I feel as though, for Cookeville, it was not about politics at first. There is a lot to be said about the political side of the Coronavirus, but one very real fact remains: many were already drowning in the storm's aftermath (and other tragedies that are experienced in life) and suddenly the whole world was plunged into one of the strangest times many of us can remember.

I look back on those weeks of staying at home, watching the normal of our lives fall away, not being able to hug loved ones, not seeing friends, hearing about the world crashing down around us when ours had already fallen, and I recall the closeness of God. Oh, the conversations that needed to be had. His patience knows no bounds. As the pandemic went on and began to wear, I found that anger encroaching upon me again, and again I shook it off. I would not be angry at God... at least that's what I told myself. It was not until a conversation spoke aloud that I realized my own unspoken intentions did not necessarily align with what was real. I was angry. I was angry at God. I was angry over the tornado, over the virus, over the obvious warfare that was taking place around us, and over what I thought was His failure to stop them all.

I attempted to temper this anger as if I might hide it from Him; as if somehow I thought He was unable to deal with my anger. He wasn't. And once I realized that He wasn't, it opened the floodgates. I had never been so enraged. I was enraged at God, my Savior, and I told Him so. Once I was finished with my screaming pity party I experienced that peaceful silence again, the one I had been given on the loading dock. "Do you do well to be angry?" In the stillness it was recalled to me that verse in Jonah.

"No," I thought. "I don't do well at all." But what else was there? I was tired of sadness, I thought happiness impossible, what else was there but anger?

Well, there was something that the Lord had given me time and time again - there was peace. There was stillness.

Oh, how many times in the next few days did I see that verse: "Be still and know that I am God." It was on my social media feeds a hundred times, it was in my study, I heard friends and family quote it. There was something other than anger, there was stillness, and how great it was. Stillness felt nothing overbearing. Stillness allowed for tears but no screaming. Stillness was not without work but was not exhausting. And stillness, in those crazy moments, could have only come from its Creator, and through it, He reminded me of the back half of that verse: "Know that I am God." Faithfulness.

Not my faithfulness, because it was more than failing, but His faithfulness. He was still God.

During a time when we all felt so isolated, so far removed from things we loved, I believe He showed us the magnitude of what we had in Him, His mercy, faithfulness, grace, and righteous judgment. So much uncertainty followed both COVID and the tornado, but there was one thing that was certain - God.

During the storm, He was faithful. During the cleanup, He was faithful. During the pandemic, He was faithful. During my anger, He remained faithful. And as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil for He is with us, and it becomes more and more about faith. I don't understand the why of so many things that have happened since March 3rd. I don't understand why so many lost their lives. I don't understand every aspect of the Coronavirus or why we must now walk through the weight of nations' scruples. But I don't need to understand and I don't need to be fearful, because what I do know is that the same God who made heaven and earth, who formed us all and knew us before we were born, is the God who saw better than we the destruction and heartache to those whom He also loved, yet infinitely more than we did. In my inability to understand the why behind worldly hardships and repercussions of a fallen earth, do I dare to believe that God's love is made less by these things? Or that He took pleasure in watching His people hurt? What heresy!

In the book of John, it talks about the death of Lazarus, Jesus's friend. "When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, He was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. “Where have you laid him?” He asked.

“Come and see, Lord,” they replied.

Jesus wept." (John 11:33-35)

He cried with them. At the death of their friend, our God cried with those whom He loved, and, just as He will do one day for those we have lost, He raised Lazarus up again.

In this world we are - or at least I am - so glad for the happiness of the light, that I forget the purpose of the darkness. Unlike earthly plants, spiritual fruit grows even in the darkness, and oftentimes best there. And it is there that our faith grows as we witness our God deliver us over and over again. So we need not ask "Why, God?" because if we are to have faith in anything, it must be in Him who loved us and our loved ones before we even knew of them. And on March 3rd, when we couldn't hold those we love, He did, and His arms were greater than ours.

I don't know what the days will bring as we delve into 2021, and I don't understand why the events of 2020 took place. But I don't need to. All I know is that already we are victorious. Even in the midst of the relentless, God has made all still. He is our victor in the here and now. We may ask Him over and over, "why?" and we may feel He does not answer, but our feelings are empty terrors; they mean nothing. What He has said is this, "In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” We worry for nothing. He has already won. His faithfulness, grace, and abundant mercy are more than enough to fight our minuscule battles and grow us in our small times of darkness. When our flesh gets angry and screams, our God is not overwhelmed.

Very recently I stood at the foot of the loading dock at Cookeville Performing Art's Center and looked out over the same town, but I found that I was not the same person. A lot had changed in Cookeville too, and yet, I found it no longer unhappy or numb, but filled with the repetition of one particular verse: "For I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth.”

"And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.

And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh." - Luke 21:25-28