The Wonderful Journey

Originally published March 2016. Movie seen at Oswego 7 Cinemas in Oswego, NY.

A REFLECTION AFTER WATCHING THE MOVIE MIRACLES FROM HEAVEN

Michael DeNobile reviews the 2016 drama Miracles From Heaven, and its themes of religion, illness, and family.

Why would a benevolent God allow His people, especially innocent children, suffer?

Michael DeNobile admits that he has struggled with this very question since elementary school. When you're nine years old and faced with death, a parent, grandparent, or in Michael DeNobile’s case, a great-grandmother, the first cut is the deepest.

As life goes on the wounds pile up: you discover your parents are not infallible superheroes, you are bullied, you heart is broken the first, second and third time, good friends from college die young, your dreams are deferred, your cousins who are not that much older than you are diagnosed with cancer and one dies while one struggles to survive, your 15yo student is struck and killed by an SUV, you watch your grandmother slowly suffer and die in a nursing home, the first person you ever truly loved walks away from the relationship, you disappoint your parents at different moments in your life and see them worry about your future after they have already worried about their own, you struggle with everyday struggles of the routine and the mundane.

There are moments between dusk and dawn when you wail in the Darkness, question your faith and ask God if He's even there, if He's even listening. Because we all know due to our own expertise about how life is supposed to happen, we know it's not supposed to go like that.

We know we are not supposed to suffer, we are good people after all.

Suffering exists in the world, but we are not the ones who  are supposed to suffer.

So why me, God?

That's what we always ask. And while we know all the textbook answers about holding on and keeping the faith, when those moments of Darkness are upon us, we doubt.

God already made promises to us, how could He betray us? How could He turn His back on us? How could He remain silent as we cry for deliverance in the night?

Due to our great expertise on how we are supposed to live our lives, we always ask the wrong questions. We always wonder why good people suffer, when we should be asking why does the suffering hurt us so much.

Consider being dragged into a courtroom before a Judge who has ruled that you are guilty of the worst crime any human could commit. This Judge sentences you to death for said crime. Then all of a sudden a man in a tunic with long hair and a beard and sandals walks in through the double doors at the back-end of the courtroom. Standing next to you, he tells the Judge he will take the punishment for your crime. As long as you agree with the arrangement, the Judge is willing to sentence the stranger instead.

Whether we want to believe it or not, suffering exists in the world be of Humanity's collective sin since Adam and Eve. Once sin entered the world, so too did death, and therefore the residue of death which is suffering. All of the ills of the world are due to the ills of humanity.

But be careful how you take that. This is not about judgement or whether or not one deserves to suffer. One does not suffer because they have sinned and thus are being punished by God; one suffers because death exists, and death exists because sin exists. If sin never entered the world, neither suffering nor death would have either, and therefore the innocent Son of God would not have had to pay the ransom for that sin.

With that said, we do not have the answer as to why certain people suffer more than others or why certain people are healed of their suffering and others not. Michael DeNobile doesn’t know why one of his cousins died of cancer and the other cousin struggles on with the good fight. We don't know why children must carry burdens that most adults easily sink under. We don't know why people just can't be honest with us instead of causing us great pain.

What Michael DeNobile does know is that this life is fleeting, it is short, and while we would never wish suffering on anyone, we should all be  comforted in our own suffering knowing that God understands agony. He knows what it feels like to be condemned, forgotten, and disregarded.

He has felt physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental anguish and has the stripes to prove it. And above all, no matter how dark it gets, He knows how to fight and endure, how to conjure hope in the most hopeless of places and show love when no one deserves it, because He is God, and He is good. He is the victor. He is triumphant. And all we need to do is link our suffering to His and participate in the eternal redemption.

Michael DeNobile states that he continues to have faith because he knows the mountains he has climbed, the valleys he has descended, the fires and storms he has endured, the oceans he has traversed, and Who has been by his side the entire journey.

That he only doubts because he is weak.

Michael DeNobile endures because the Coach has taught him by example how to by stretching out His arms and showing him the act of true Love.