Disappointment with God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud

by Philip Yancey

Despite the awesome emptiness of our universe, despite the pain that haunts it, something lingers, like a scent of old perfume, from that moment of beginnings in Genesis 1. I too have sensed it. The first time I rounded a bend and saw Yosemite Valley spread out before me, its angel-hair waterfalls spilling over the snow-glazed granite. On a small peninsula of Ontario where five million migrating monarch butterflies stop to rest, their papery wings adorning every tree with shimmering, translucent orange. In the children’s zoo in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, where every beast born — gorilla, aardvark, or hippopotamus — begins life mischievous and full of play. Eiseley is right: at the heart of the universe is a smile, a pulse of joy passed down from the moment of creation. A new parent who holds a baby, my baby, close against flesh for the first time knows it. And that is the feeling God had when he looked over what he had made and pronounced it good. In the beginning, the very beginning, there was no disappointment. Only joy.