One of my favorite Scripture quotes comes from Jeremiah: “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future of hope…if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.” (Jer 29:11-14)

While I love this quote precisely because it reminds me that God is there, always, waiting for me to come around, sometimes it offers more questions than answers. If we are in the throes of suffering or we are watching others suffer, it can make us wonder what exactly God wants us to do to earn release from our “exile”? When we don’t get a response or a clue, it can leave us feeling ignored and abandoned.

As we look around our world, our country, our communities, and our families, we witness suffering that can seem cruel, perhaps even beyond what humans can be expected to bear. It is in moments like these that God may feel distant, unreachable, maybe even absent. It can cause not only spiritual despair but a doubt so deep that we may begin to question the very foundation of faith that has always shored us up.

“Even a believer can sometimes falter when faced with the experience of pain,” Pope Francis has said. “It is a frightening reality that, when it barges in and attacks, can leave a person distraught, even to the point of shattering his or her faith. The person then is faced with a crossroads: he or she can allow suffering to lead to withdrawal into self-doubt to the point of despair and rebellion; or he or she can accept it as an opportunity for growth and discernment about what really matters in life until the time one encounters God.”

As is often the case, the pope’s wise words are difficult to live. Finding an “opportunity for growth” in the hardest moments of our lives or in the pain of those around us can feel like a pious platitude. So, what can we do if we feel ourselves faltering and cannot see our way clear to approach our suffering in such an enlightened way just yet? We can continue to show up in prayer. Daily. Even when it feels as though our spiritual life is a black hole devoid of God’s presence and our prayers words shouted into the wind.

Paulist Father Tom Ryan, leading a retreat I attended years ago at St. Mary’s on the Lake in Lake George, offered one “non-negotiable” when it comes to prayer. “Be faithful to the rendezvous,” he said, following up with a challenging question: “Can you love the God of consolations when the consolations aren’t there?”

Perhaps that is a question each one of us can ponder not just today but any time a prayer isn’t answered in the way we had hoped or isn’t answered at all (at least as far as we can tell). Can we continue to show up and sit in God’s presence anyway, knowing that if we do — through dark and light, joy and sorrow, abundance and scarcity — God will respond to our hungry hearts in God’s own time and release us from our exile?

This column originally appeared in the Jan. 23, 2025, issue of The Evangelist.

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So why did poor Thomas get hung out to dry? In some ways, despite his title as the doubter in the crowd, he is the one who offers the rest of us hope. We hear Thomas’s story and realize that it is possible to doubt one minute and then say without hesitation, “My Lord and my God.” It is possible to make mistakes and be saved, to lose faith—however briefly and for however long—and find that Jesus is still there, in our midst, waiting for us to recognize him and accept the peace he offers.

Mary DeTurris Poust, “Possibly the Best Title,” from the July 2021 issue of Give Us This Day www.giveusthisday.org (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2021). Used with permission.

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When I finally saw the cardiologist yesterday — after a somewhat-nervewracking wait between iodine-injected scan and results — I was a tiny bit nervous that my Advent season was going to be more about waiting in doctors’ offices and hospitals rather than waiting in silent prayer at home in front of the Advent wreath. But I lucked out. The doctor told me my scan bored him. One reading was zero, as in, can’t get any better or lower than that. At that point I think I started breathing again. It had been a long two weeks, going without breathing and all.

I sat in my car in the parking lot and immediately called Dennis, and then I called God. (Probably should have done that the other way around, but Dennis is easier to reach.) I was a minute or so into thanking God for this good news, when I suddenly flashed in my mind’s eye to the two local families who will be burying their teenagers this week after a tragic car crash caused by an allegedly drunk driver (not either of the teens). As I thought about those families and the pain they must be feeling and about my own little worries and the gratitude I was feeling, I wondered how I’d feel about God at that moment if I were in their shoes instead of my own. Certainly I wouldn’t be thanking him. Would I be yelling at him? (Probably.) Would I be doubting him? (Maybe.) Would I be walking out on him? (Possibly.)

When we are caught in a moment, it’s hard to imagine that life will go on, no less that it’s unfolding as it should. How could sorrow or tragedy ever be part of a cosmic plan? And yet, somehow it is. I think I cried through a video tribute to those two teenagers yesterday not only because I could imagine in some small way the desperate sadness their parents must be feeling but because I know how easily the ground can shift beneath us and how quickly we can go from feeling blessed to feeling abandoned.

But that is not God’s doing, that is our own. God remains, whether we are giving thanks or shuddering with grief. And it’s okay if we yell and doubt and walk away for a while. I know I did all of those things when my mother died almost 25 years ago. God’s big enough to take it all and wait patiently for us to realize that God doesn’t cause our sorrow; God walks us through it. Not an easy thing to remember or live but something I’m going to sit with a bit this Advent as I pray for those families and for all those facing sadness and wondering, “Why?”

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