When God Lets Us Down

What do you do when sadness settles over your soul?

The summer of 2022 hammered us with a hard one-two punch. A dear friend passed away after a short but brutal bout with esophageal cancer. From diagnosis to death, David lived fourteen months. Now, as I sift through my own sorrow, I also have the bitter privilege of a front-row seat to Camille’s pain. And so I grieve. Yes, for David, but more so for his wife and their sons.

Another friend—a pillar of our church’s women’s ministry—also lost her cancer battle. Where David’s fight was fast and furious, Amy’s was long. Drawn out.

With mountain-top highs followed by the black-pit lows.

David and Amy died within seven days of each other.

As the darkness of despair slithered its way into my thoughts, I turned to the only place I knew to go—the scarred feet of Christ.

I read psalms of lament.

I listened to Bible teaching podcasts.

I journaled.

I commiserated with Camille and other trusted friends.

Recently, while making dinner, I turned on my favorite worship playlist and turned the volume up as high as it would go.

A song I’d long loved came on, so I sang along as I chopped onions and minced garlic.

You are good…good…ohh, oh…

My spirits soared with the smell of sizzling honey soy sauce, wafting like incense toward the heavens.

You’re never gonna let…never gonna let me down…

Cuz you are good…good…

I stopped slicing and dicing and stared at the screen, then turned off the music and sat down.

Friends, those lyrics tell a lie.

Yes, God is good. Always. All the time. Day in, day out. God only does good. He never does bad.

But he will certainly let you down.

I can’t begin to count the prayer meetings where we begged God to work a miracle of healing on David and Amy. We laid on hands, prayed Scripture, and pleaded in Jesus’s name.

And God said, “No.”

Twice. Within seven days.

He let me down. Hard. He let Camille down. He let her sons down. He let our church down. He let Amy’s husband and four children down. We hoped in God and prayed big things and God. Said. No.

But guess what?

God is good. So good. Exceedingly good. And it has nothing to do with when or how he answers our prayers.

Thousands of years ago, a prophet, speaking the Lord’s words to wayward Israel, said, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa. 55:8–9).

Translation: we will never understand why God allows terrible things to happen to good people. Neither will we get why evil seemingly continues unchecked. But that does not take away from God’s goodness. Indeed, it is because of our Father’s track record of goodness that we trust in him when he lets us down.

I worry about rock-star churches with fog machines and famous pastors who preach messages of believing and receiving, victory and overcoming, without ever mentioning the road lined with suffering. I fear more for their members who know nothing more than an emotion-driven faith that has no place for weakness, depression, or despair.

Jesus has won the victory. But he won by dying.

One day we will share in his glory. But the path to glory is marred with tribulation.

When sadness settles over your soul, it’s okay to let it sit for a while. Because we can’t understand God’s ways, we will certainly feel let down when things don’t go our way. And Jesus showed us how to grieve when he wept by Lazarus’s grave (Jn. 11:35).

God is still good. And his word promises us that the sunrise of joy always follows the dark night of sorrow (Ps. 30:5).