Whenever we enter a season of trials, troubles, or temptations our tendency is to ask “WHY?” Our thoughts often quickly turn to Job in the Old Testament; we can commiserate with his plight and his desperation to understand why God allows such terrible things to happen. Unfortunately, like him, we rarely get the answers we seek.

Theologian, N.T. Wright offers his perspective on this when he says, “…Rationalists want explanations, Romantics want to be given a sigh of relief, but perhaps what we need more than either is to recover the biblical tradition of lament…”.  To lament is to express sorrow, mourning or regret over something – and it is what we experience when we ask “why?” and don’t get an answer. This is the time to begin processing; making space to grieve and to search ourselves and God. Isolation and deprivation give us the opportunity to shift our paradigm. If instead of avoiding or denying it, we lean into it and explore it, new things may emerge or become clearer; we can discover more about ourselves and those we’re in relationship with.

We like to have control and authority over what happens in our lives but, in truth, we have very little. The Coronavirus pandemic is a glaring example. The first couple of weeks of quarantine may have seemed a welcomed break in our routine, but as time goes on, the novelty wears off and is replaced by struggle, anxiety and stress as we lose our sense of autonomy and don’t have an end in sight. We can compare this to what the Israelites might have felt when they were led to the edge of the Jordan River (Joshua 3:2) before crossing into the promised land. They didn’t see how; they didn’t know God’s plan or how long it would take. God chose for His people to wait, watch, and depend on Him to come to their aid.