Trusting God When Nothing Makes Sense
You can trust God without understanding Him. Trust and comprehension are different things, and Scripture never makes the second one a requirement for the first.
When the pieces don't fit
This is a different problem from God feeling far away. He might feel entirely present. That's almost the harder version — because if He's here, and He's good, and He could have, then what do you do with what happened?
People will hand you explanations. Most of them are worse than the silence. Everything happens for a reason. God needed another angel. He's teaching you something. Some of that is well-meant. Almost none of it survives contact with a real loss.
Trust is not the same as understanding
Somewhere along the way, a lot of us picked up the idea that faith means having an explanation that holds. So when the explanation collapses, we assume the faith has to go with it.
It doesn't. You can hold two things at once: I don't understand this and I'm not letting go of Him. That combination is not a contradiction. It's most of the Bible.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways,” says Yahweh. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”Isaiah 55:8-9, WEB
That verse is often used to shut a grieving person up. It wasn't written to do that. It's not stop asking — it's you are asking a question bigger than your vantage point, which is a very different sentence.
What Job actually got
Job asked for an explanation for thirty-seven chapters. When God finally answered, He never gave one. He asked Job a long series of questions about the world instead.
And somehow that was enough for Job. Not because he got the information. Because he got God.
That may be infuriating to read while you're still in it. It's worth sitting with anyway, because it means the absence of an explanation was never evidence of absence.
Living without the explanation
Practically, this looks like lowering what you require in order to keep going. You don't need the whole thing to make sense. You need enough footing for today.
“Trust in Yahweh with all your heart, and don't lean on your own understanding.”Proverbs 3:5, WEB
Don't lean on it — not don't have it. You're allowed to think hard about this. You're just not required to solve it before you're allowed to trust.
What to do this week
Stop trying to build the explanation. Say the honest sentence to God instead: I don't understand this and I'm still here. That is a complete prayer.
And find one person who will sit with the question without trying to close it. Most people can't. The ones who can are worth keeping.
If it's God's silence rather than the circumstances, this page is closer. If the waiting itself is what's worn you out, start here.
One short devotion a day, for thirty days — built for the season nobody claps for.