For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from him. (Psalm 62:5 NRSV Bible)
In his book, THE LIGHT WITHIN YOU, John R. Claypool relates the very painful story of the loss of their young daughter to acute leukemia. Very quickly upon diagnosis of this dreaded disease, his daughter had been given a medicine that enabled her to go into a remission. For some time she was almost perfectly normal. Naturally, this created many hopes for her family. Had the diagnosis been a mistaken one? Had she experienced the miracle of divine healing for which her father and so many others had prayed?

It was not to be. All of these hopes came to an abrupt end, ironically, on Easter Sunday morning, when the old pains reappeared and she went into a severe relapse that involved hospitalization for some two weeks. Part of the time both of her eyes were swollen shut, and pain racked every part of her body. John Claypool reports that moving with her through those two weeks was an unspeakably draining experience. He found himself stretched in every way - physically exhausted, emotionally dissipated, his faith itself challenged as never before.

The worst moment of all, however, came one night when his daughter could get no relief, and she asked him, "When will this leukemia go away?" He answered, "I don't know, darling, but we are doing everything in our power to find an answer to cure it."

There was a long silence, and then she asked in the darkness, "Have you asked God when the leukemia will go away?" Her pastor/father hedged a bit and said, "You know, darling, how we have prayed again and again for God to help us." But she persisted: "Have you asked God when it will go away? What did He say?"

Claypool asks, "How do you respond to such childlike directness at a time when the heavens seem utterly silent...?"

There are some questions without an answer. When I as a minister go to the hospital or at the funeral home in an hour when someone has experienced a great tragedy, I do not go with ready-made answers. I will go to remind people of God's love and hope. I will pray with them, but I will not have all the answers. God's ways are not our ways! Some questions have no answers. Such times demand a measure of silence.

Dear Jesus, help me to walk faithfully in your footsteps, especially when God seems to be silent. I pray in your name. Amen.

Ron Newhouse

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