Doubts, Darkness, and Unanswered Questions

Not long ago I spent time with someone enduring a long season of suffering. Sharing many things in common, our visits overflow with easy conversation and genuine connection. A rare friendship where we rest without the need to impress, suppress authenticity, or fear judgment, we open our hearts to wrestle with the hard things in life. We have both found ourselves grappling with doubts, darkness and unanswered questions in our current seasons of life. In these seasons though we determine to persevere with steadfast faith, our hope wavers.

Embattled by suffering, doubts and unanswered questions swirl amid the darkness obscuring the light of hope so necessary for our souls to find their way home.

In seasons of complex suffering like my friend has endured for several years, God’s silence leaves us wrestling with guilt over our doubts about His love, disillusionment over our faith, and perhaps worst of all, whether God is who He says He is.

Even Jesus’ disciples faced the uncomfortable reality of doubts, darkness, and unanswered questions after His death. A death they never saw coming despite Jesus’ references to it on more than one occasion. Though Jesus attempted to prepare His men for His inevitable death and subsequent resurrection, John’s gospel reveals their confusion at the tomb.

“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. ² So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

John 20:1-2 NIV

Mary Magdalene went to the tomb while it was still dark, continuing to process her grief. She knew He was dead, but at the tomb she felt a nearness to Him. Verse two tells us she found the tomb empty, and in fear ran to tell Peter and John that Jesus’ body was now missing.

“ So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. ⁴ Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵ He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. ⁶ Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, ⁷ as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. ⁸ Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. ⁹ (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) ¹⁰ Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.”

John 20:3-10 NIV

Peter and John run to the tomb to see for themselves, and though John arrives first, he only peers inside taking in the scene, while Peter rushes in gazing at the linen grave clothes laying there without a body.

No words were spoken by either disciple, and verse eight states John then went inside, saw, and “believed”. But what did he believe? Verse nine says, “They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.” All they believed at this point was that Jesus’ body was missing; and in verse ten they go back home.

They did not yet know or understand the truth that Jesus would rise from the dead, despite His telling them this fact prior to His arrest. We know they did not believe this truth because in Mark 16:11 after Mary Magdalene encountered the risen Christ while staying behind at the tomb after Peter and John returned home, she told them of her encounter, and they refused to believe her.

Envisioning Peter, John, and Mary Magdalene standing in the dark, empty tomb silent, each with their own doubts and unanswered questions, my heart connects with theirs.

They stood grieving their loss—of a friend, of hope for a promised future, of the expectations of their faith. But they also stood there with their doubts. Perhaps Jesus was not the long-awaited Messiah, perhaps the kingdom of God was a myth, perhaps their faith was misplaced. The empty tomb echoed questions for which no answers seemed possible now.

How often have I stood mute in the doubts, darkness and unanswered questions of my suffering and grief seeing only emptiness where I expected to see Jesus?

How often have I, like Peter and John, confused and disillusioned turned and wandered back to the comfort of my grief?

The disciples had Jesus’ words, they had the memory of daily life with Him, of all He did while they were together. They had His promises, spoken in detail to them in the Upper Room that last night, yet they failed to embrace the truth in front of them.

We have a complete revelation, far more than the disciples had standing in the empty tomb, yet we also fail to see the truth in our own darkness. In the midst of our deepest pain, we see only Jesus’ absence as Peter and John saw. What we miss is the presence and power which was there. The empty linens prove not His absence, but His presence and evidence His power at work.

Rather than provoke doubt, the empty linens shout validation of all His promises.

In haste we succumb to our doubts and unanswered questions, concluding Jesus, like His promises are missing, and we return to our grief. The angel’s response to Mary Magdalene in Luke 24:5 pulls us from despondency.

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

When we remain at the tomb in doubts, darkness, and unanswered questions, we see only the death of all we hoped for in Jesus’ absence. But when we look again with eyes of faith in His promises, we see evidence of His presence and power at work in our suffering.

As we walk by faith, our perspective changes. Though our season of suffering may continue, we find evidence of Christ’s presence within it. Where we doubted His love, we see Him pouring His love out through the support of others, unexpected provisions, or peace amid the pain.

Our circumstances may remain, but we no longer feel alone, and we find strength in His love enough to trust Him with the outcome.

R. S. Thomas expresses this so well in the final stanza of his poem, “The Answer”.

There have been times
when, after long on my knees
in a cold chancel, a stone has rolled
from my mind, and I have looked
in and seen the old questions lie
folded and in a place
by themselves, like the piled
graveclothes of love’s risen body.

Are you wrestling with doubts, and unanswered questions in a season of suffering? Are you sitting with disappointment and broken hope? Look again at the graveclothes and see the answer you needed all along.

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