The ones that didn't make it
What if God doesn't answer?
How long, O Lord, holy and true?
Whenever I think about the discipline of lament, and waiting on God, I always have this niggling thought in the back of my mind, "What about those who wait for God and he never answers?"
This isn't a voice of doubt, it's the voice of faith seeking understanding. It's the voice that says our theology of prayer, suffering, sovereignty, lament, and eschatology all need to run up against this test-case. And these aren't the hypotheticals of undergraduate philosophy courses, they're the real life sufferings of believers.
Hebrew slaves in Egypt who cried out to God and died before the Exodus. Jews in the inter-testament period who didn't live to see the light of hope like Simeon and Anna. Generations of African-Americans who died in slavery; who were born in slavery, had children in slavery, and died in slavery, knowing no deliverance in this life. Palestinian Christians who are now 3rd, and 4th, generation refugees. Christians who die from famine. (Ps 37:25)
Shusaku Endo's twin novels, Silence and The Samurai, somewhat approach the same problem. Christianity was virtually extinguished from Japan. God seemed silent. He didn't deliver. The blood of martyrs was not the seed of the church. Even today Christianity struggles on Japanese soil. Mongolia, despite a long history of Christianity, had zero Christians in the communist era.
It's entirely possible that our laments, our cries of "how long, O Lord?" in response to a situation in which the world is wrong, in which we desire for God to set things right, will find that God does not incline his ear and intercede to rescue, rectify, restore, and bring justice and salvation in our lifetime.
That's what I wrestle with. That's also the rider you need to attach, in our lifetime. Patient hope in the God of deliverance needs to meet with fidelity unto death. That's the secret of christian martyrdom. Those Christians throughout history who went to their deaths, trusted that God would deliver them, and resigned themselves that he might not deliver them from that particular death. Their vision of faith looked beyond death to resurrection.
So too the early Church recognised that what was laudable and meritorious in martyrs was not that they died for the faith, but that they were faithful unto death in not abandoning their faith, and so it was their faith that was praised. Their deaths weren't their own doing, weren't under their own control. So what about those who were faithful under persecution and willing to die for the faith, but were spared actual death? The church labelled them "confessors", and (almost-)equally honoured them.
Whenever we talk about patience, about waiting, about God will rescue, deliver, bring about the restoration of what is good and true and just and peaceable, we need to have the wherewithal, and the mental and spiritual space to say, "you might be waiting your whole life, and it might not come". For Anna and Simeon in the temple, waiting to see the consolation of Israel, how many more faithful Israelites were there who didn't live to see that day?
I find this a sobering thought. It brings me back to the persistent widow and the question that leaves us with is, when the last day comes, either your last day or the Lord's return, will we still be faithfully waiting, patiently praying? What might it look like to keep praying for something or someone, knowing that it's a right and proper prayer, and to be praying that prayer to your dying day? That's a prayer of faith in a God bigger than our plans and dreams and hopes, a prayer to a God faithful and good and sovereign beyond our understanding.
