I woke up at 3:30 this morning and felt compelled to pray for some people who I care a lot about. A relationship on the rocks, a new family who had the rug pulled out from under them, major surgery of a dear friend, another friend's father waiting and waiting for the promised callback from a job interview, still another friend waiting to hear back about a dream job.

As I watch my friends go through this, I want to shout out an answer but I have none that will unlock the mystery of their pain.

Philip Yancey has captured well what I want to say, "I am where you are ... an ordinary person trying to figure things out, I'm a human being: I love, I weep, my friends die, I experience beauty, I live. And as I live I try to figure out if there is a God, and what difference would that make ..."

I know there is a God and my life is built around this truth. But I still wonder, "if this is God's world, why doesn't it look more like it?

 Mind you, I have heard the myriad answers people have as they try to make sense of the pain and suffering that define this life.  In my personal experience of these I see rumors of something much better. This world we live in hints at a lack of completion.  There is something missing. And this story without an ending is the reason I believe in an invisible world that is complete; that makes this visible world make sense. 

This lack of completion that characterizes our lives should remind us that we are mere sojourners in this visible world; that the answers we so desperately want are there. In the meantime God's gift to us is faith.