This just blew my mind a little bit.

excerpt from Hope Against Hope, by Richard Bauckham and Trevor Hart

“Since the cross cannot be edited out of the Christian metanarrataive, it forbids those who tell the Christian story any whitewashing of history, any progressivist tale of success which neglects the victims, any of the glossy simulacra with which the image-makers of modernity mask the horrors of history. The Christian metanarrative does not offer a speculative theodicy. It tells a story of God’s dealings with evil which offers hope without minimizing or justifying evil. Above all, it finds in the cross God’s loving solidarity with all who suffer and proffers hope for the end of history, when God will wipe away the tears from every eye and take his creation beyond the reach of evil.”

Dang.
Where did we get the idea that life with Jesus would make everything OK all of a sudden?
Why do we think that telling people “God has a reason for everything” is a good consolation when they just lose someone to cancer, suicide, accident, etc.?
God is not ignoring the cries for help, and someday the story WILL have a conclusion, all the loose ends will be tied up… but it will be by God. The story does not necessarily make sense until then.

They end with this:
“Therefore it is in the highest degree important not to tell the story as though it were an already completed whole…We can neither master the future nor wait passively for it (though this is sometimes required). Christian hope is thus neither promethean nor quietest. It neither attempts what can only come from God no neglects what is humanly possible.”

We are participating in a story, God’s cosmic story, and our little contribution will make sense only in light of the completed whole.