Your Mourning Coffee 10/27/2025

Good mourning!

Welcome to your mourning coffee! May our Heavenly Father wipe the jumbled mess of our struggles and doubts clean from the slate of our mind. Please calm the turbulent waters of our hearts. And deal kindly and calmly with us. Father, bring us before ourselves, so that we might see ourselves through your eyes, and not our own. And then, as you set us aright by new-morning mercies, help us to see you more clearly. And so see all things more clearly. Jesus, in your name we ask, make us wise. Holy Spirit, grow us and help us to bear God-pleasing fruit in our inner and outer living. Amen.

Your Mourning Song: "Call Your Name" by Dan Bremnes

Your Morning Scripture: Job 38:1-7

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:

2 “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?

3 Dress for action like a man;

I will question you, and you make it known to me.

4 “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?

Tell me, if you have understanding.

5 Who determined its measurements—surely you know!

Or who stretched the line upon it?

6 On what were its bases sunk,

or who laid its cornerstone,

7 when the morning stars sang together

and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

...

I have it! The one true answer to any and all questions and requests and doubts that you may ever have.

Go ahead. Try it out.

Before you read any further, take a moment and think of the hardest doubt or struggle or hurt or grief you have. Or perhaps you could borrow one from someone you know who has a really tough one.

Lost or losing a loved one? Work struggles? Health struggles? Faith struggles? Discouragement in the world around you? Discouragement with yourself? I've got several myself, the worst being thinking that we had a miscarriage a few years ago, being out a job in the middle of COVID, and being told that our four-year-old son might have cancer (All of those within a season of life, that was tough).

Get one into your mind and hold it there. The more you feel like you just don't have any kind of answer to it, the better.

...

...

...

God Himself is the answer.

Overly simplistic? Somewhat disappointing? Too Sunday-school-ish to be satisfying? I get that. And for most of my life I would have agreed with you, quietly, in my heart, while saying "amen!" out loud.

God Himself as the answer to any and all of these kinds of struggles and questions and doubts used to be deeply unsatisfying to me.

And there are two possible explanations with that, as there are two pieces to this dilemma. There's God. And then there's me.

Maybe the problem was with me? (Most certainly was).

If you are not satisfied with God as the ultimate answer, the best possible answer to anything, then the problem is not that He is not ultimately trustworthy and satisfying. The problem is that we can't or won't see it.

God is perfect in all things. If our God is not objectively, morally perfect, then He is not God. If every choice He makes is not the best possibly choice, then He is not God. If He ever fails, or comes up short, He is not God.

If He ever does anything I don't agree with, or don't like, my heart is so quick to blame Him. But the blame doesn't stick.

God answered Job's struggles and doubts and frustration with the best possible answer. Himself. It's even better, considering the way He actually does it in the book of Job, very reminiscent of how Jesus would go back and forth with people in the Gospels. A question.

Who are you? Where were you?

At the very foundation of our very worst and most painful struggles and doubts and questions, is our own fallenness, our own imperfection, our own blindness to who we really actually are. And God answers what dark, bleeding, shattered things lay in a begging heap in the depths of us, with Himself.

I am able to be at peace and to be content in life, because no matter what else God gives me, no matter what answers He gives, yes's and no's, He gives me Himself.

And He is enough.

No matter what.

Does God give us more? Absolutely! Does He love to explain Himself to His faithful children? Absolutely! Does He love to pull us closer to Himself and cover us with grace and mercy and comfort? Absolutely.

But the truest, best answer will always be Him. He who so loved. He who so came to save us. He who guides and directs us.

Our Father in Heaven, Jesus our Savior, the Holy Spirit our comforter.

Forever enough.