When Heaven is Silent I have often wondered if Job, after losing his family and property, would have heard God as clearly had he not emptied himself of the myriad thoughts and questions disturbing him in the face of unexplained loss. I questioned goodness and tragedy, love and pain, promises and reality. Help my unbelief. There is no dark so dark as hopelessness. When all hope is gone and we are convinced it will never be retrieved, we die, if not physically, then most certainly emotionally.
Life becomes meaningless.
For hope to be real and operable in the midst of a lifestorm, it must be rooted in the truth of an unchanging, sovereign God. God's purpose is not to make us comfortable, but to make us like himself in character, so that one day we will stand in the presence of a holy God, because he has made us holy. In our darkest hours, we must cling tenaciously to the hope stored up for us in haven. When we do that, we begin to see meaning and purpose in our most painful and baffling experiences. The sustaining force of this hope allows us to believe that God is doing great work in our suffering.