Friend, Lend Me Three Loaves
It's the question that arrives at midnight. It never comes when the sun is high and your spirit is strong, but always in the dark, when the house is still and the walls feel thin. A phone call comes, a doctor sits you down, you stand over a fresh grave, and the question tears out of your throat, raw and ragged: Why? Why does God, who is supposedly good, allow this? Why does God kill? The question itself is a desperate friend, a sudden arrival that finds your own spiritual pantry completely bare, for you have nothing, absolutely nothing, to set before the ravenous hunger of such a grief.
It was right after praying that one of his disciples, feeling that same kind of emptiness, said to Jesus, 'Lord, teach us to pray.' They weren't asking for a magic spell to get what they wanted; they were asking for a lifeline to the Father. And the very first thing Christ puts on their lips is the most dangerous prayer a person can utter: 'Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth.' It's one thing to say those words when His will aligns with our plans, when the kingdom seems to be coming in blessings and abundance, but it is another thing entirely to speak them from the floor, when His will feels like a thief that has just kicked down your door.
But notice where Jesus goes immediately after teaching them this prayer of absolute surrender. He doesn't talk about quiet acceptance or pious resignation. He tells a story about a man pounding on his neighbor's door at midnight, demanding bread without apology, making a scene. This isn't the picture of someone who has their theology sorted out; this is the picture of a desperate soul who refuses to take silence for an answer. God isn't teaching us to just lie down and accept tragedy; He is inviting us into the divine wrestling match, urging us to beat on the door with what He calls 'importunity' until we get the bread we need to survive the darkness.
I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.— Luke 11:8, KJV
She Hath Wrought a Good Work Upon Me
Our human minds are built for calculation, for weighing costs and benefits, and when we are confronted with what appears to be a senseless loss, our first reaction is often indignation. We look at a life cut short, a family torn apart, a future erased, and we cry out, 'To what purpose is this waste?' We become like the disciples in the house at Bethany, watching a woman pour out a year's wages in perfume upon the feet of Jesus. They saw only the waste. They saw the squandered potential, the money that could have been given to the poor, the practical good that was forsaken for a moment of extravagant, seemingly pointless, devotion. Their logic was sound, their accounting was correct, but their hearts were blind to the moment.
Jesus, however, sees the situation from an entirely different plane of existence. He doesn't see waste; he sees worship. He doesn't see a financial loss; He sees a prophetic act, an anointing for the burial He was about to endure. He says, 'she hath wrought a good work upon me.' In that moment, He redefines the very meaning of loss for all time, showing us that what appears to be a tragic end from our earthly vantage point can be a beautiful, purposeful act in the economy of heaven. The finished work of Christ, His own impending death which this perfume foreshadowed, is the only thing that can absorb the shock of our own losses and transform them from meaningless tragedies into something that, in a way we can't yet comprehend, is a 'good work.'
If we are going to stand and ask the question, 'Why does God kill?', we are obligated to first stand at the foot of the cross and ask why God killed His only begotten Son. There, at Calvary, the Father poured out His wrath upon the Son, forsook Him, and crushed Him. It was the most violent, unjust, and wasteful death in human history, the death of perfection itself. And yet, it was the greatest act of love the universe will ever know. God's ultimate purpose was hidden inside what looked like God's ultimate failure. He took the very worst that death could do and turned it into the very best that life could be, and that single event changes how we must view every other death this side of glory.
...Why trouble ye the woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon me.— Matthew 26:10, KJV
As in Heaven, So in Earth
So what does it mean to pray 'Thy will be done' on a cold Tuesday morning when the grief is a physical presence in the room, a weight that pins you to the bed? It doesn't mean you suddenly have all the answers or that the pain magically disappears. It means you get up. It means you breathe in, breathe out, and make the coffee even when it tastes like ash. It's the quiet, stubborn refusal to believe that this present darkness is the final word on your life. Praying for His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven is an act of spiritual warfare; it is inviting the perfection, peace, and wholeness of His realm to invade the brokenness and chaos of yours, one agonizing moment at a time.
Let me plead with you, friend. Stop trying to make sense of it. You can't. The disciples walked with the man from Galilee, heard him teach, saw him perform miracles, and they still couldn't understand the purpose of the spilled perfume. You will not untangle the knot of your loss with the frayed thread of your own reason. The Lord's invitation in your suffering is not to a conclusion, but to a communion. It is an invitation to rest in the arms of the one who wept at his own friend's grave before he called him forth. He is the bread you are banging on the door for. He is the answer.
To walk in this grace is to cease treating God as a cosmic problem to be solved and to begin clinging to Him as a Father to be trusted, even when He is shrouded in mystery. It is the steady conviction that His will, which is being executed perfectly in heaven at this very moment, is good, even when its shadow falls upon our patch of earth in a shape we do not recognize. We live in the painful middle, the time between the resurrection and the restoration of all things. Our calling in this middle place is not to have all the answers, but to hold fast to the One who is the Answer, trusting that the same hands that were pierced for our salvation are the ones now holding the shattered pieces of our lives.
...Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth.— Luke 11:2, KJV
It Shall Be Opened Unto You
Here is the solid ground beneath your feet when everything else has turned to quicksand. Jesus does not end his teaching on prayer with the difficult submission to God's will; he ends it with a stunning, ironclad promise. 'And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.' This is not a flimsy hope; it is a divine guarantee from the lips of the Son of God. The promise is not that you will get your old life back, or that the person you have lost will walk back through the door. The promise is that the door you are knocking on will open. The promise is that when you seek Him in the wreckage, you will find Him. The promise is that when you ask for the bread of His presence to sustain you, it will be given.
The greatest tragedy is not the midnight arrival of grief; the greatest tragedy is to walk away from the door, convinced that no one is home or that the one inside is cruel. That is the lie that leads to the chains of bitterness and despair. It's the voice that whispers that if you had only been a better Christian, if you had prayed more, if you had more faith, then this wouldn't have happened. That is not the gospel. The promise is for 'every one that asketh,' not for the ones who ask correctly or have it all together. Your job is not to understand. Your job is to stay at the door. Keep asking. Keep seeking. Keep knocking.
And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.— Luke 11:9, KJV
That brutal, honest question, 'Why does God kill?', finds its only possible resolution not in a philosophical treatise, but in a person. The question is answered at a tomb, not with a reason, but with a resurrection. The life you loved, the future you lost, is like that alabaster box of perfume in the Lord's sight—broken, yes, but the fragrance of it is not lost to Him, and He is holding it for the day when He will wipe away every tear from your eyes. Do not mistake this terrible, painful middle for the end of the story. Keep your fist on that midnight door. He isn't bothered by your noise. He is the friend who will rise, and He will open the door, and He will give you not the answer you think you want, but the only thing you truly need: Himself.