Last week, I posted the video trailer for my book, Wednesdays Were Pretty Normal: A Boy, Cancer, and God. It seems there is a single line in that promotional video that is resonating with folks who have seen it. The statement goes something like this:

“During times of great suffering, we think we want to know ‘why.’ But despite what we think, we need something better than ‘why.’ We need ‘Who.’ God doesn’t always give us the answers, but He does give us something better: Himself.”

This comes from a chapter in the book which examines parts of the life of Job, a man who was bent on finding out the “why” of his suffering. His friends were convinced that the why had to do with Job’s conduct; Job was convinced it wasn’t. He didn’t know the answers, but he did not believe God was paying him back for some evil he had committed. Such was his search for the truth.

God never answered Job’s question. Nowhere in the pages of the book that bears his name in Scripture do you find God explaining all the ins and outs of why Job had to suffer. What you do find, however, is God showing up in a whirlwind, revealing Himself to the man of great suffering.

And in the end, Job learned the same thing that many of us learn in the school of pain and difficulty:

The “Who” is the better answer than the “why.”

(Preorder Wednesdays Were Pretty Normal by clicking here.)