Lord, Help Me Trust Your Plans Are Good.

A year ago, friends of mine lost their baby boy. He was sixteen days old...

One night he was a healthy, beautiful little thing. By the next night, he was gone. Some rare genetic condition no doctor had ever seen, with no warning and no mercy.

They arrived at their local hospital late at night, they were rushed to a bigger one, and then to a city hospital, where he took his last breath. It was all over in less than 24 hours.

To mark the one-year anniversary of his passing, they walked this final journey. All fifty-plus miles. From home to hospital to hospital to hospital. Retracing the road their little boy traveled.

They don't live in the UK, so I couldn't walk part of the journey beside them. But I walked here. A couple of hours around my town, thinking about a baby I sadly never got to meet. Weeping

On the walk, I wrestled with the question none of us can answer... Why?

Why him? Why them? How does a loving God let a sixteen-day-old baby slip away in the night?

So I took the question to Scripture, expecting to be corrected for asking it. Instead I found David already there, ahead of me. "How long, Yahweh? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart every day?"

Four verses of it. Four verses of David pressing God for an answer he never gets. No correction. No rebuke. No tidy reason dropped from heaven. God lets the question stand.

And then, without warning, the psalm turns. "But I trust in Your loving kindness. My heart rejoices in Your salvation."

Notice what does not happen between verse two and verse five. David does not get his answer. Nothing about his situation changes. He is still in the dark, still waiting, still wondering how long. But somewhere in the middle of his lament, he reaches for a handhold, and the handhold holds.

That is what "Lord, help me trust Your plans are good" actually sounds like.

It is not a confident declaration. It is the whisper of someone who cannot see. It begins with "help me" because we can't get there on our own.

Trusting God when life makes sense is easy. Trusting Him in the dark, when the nursery is empty and the answers never come, is something else entirely. That kind of trust is not certainty. It is holding on anyway.

I don't understand the plan. I don't think any of us do. But I'd guess you're carrying a "why" of your own today. A loss that still doesn't make sense. A phone call that changed everything. A question you've asked God a thousand times and still haven't heard back on.

Some of those questions, don't have answers this side of heaven. And that is a hard thing to sit with.

But hear this: the same God who let David ask is the God who lets you ask. He does not flinch at your question. He can take your anger, too. The Psalms are full of people yelling at God, accusing Him, telling Him He feels absent, demanding He show up. And He never once shuts them down for it.

A God who can hold the universe can hold your fury. He would rather have you angry and honest than polite and distant. He meets you in the wrestling, even the furious kind, with a loving kindness you can lean against, even when the "why" stays unanswered.

So if you are in the dark today, asking a "why" that has no answer, you are not alone and you are not wrong to ask. David asked. Jesus Himself asked from the cross. You are in holy company. You don't have to arrive at trust on your own. You only have to whisper "help me" and reach for the handhold.

It will hold.