Sometime We’ll Understand

On Easter Sunday, I attended a performance of Rob Gardner’s oratorio Lamb of God. Following the last week of Christ’s mortal ministry, the production’s transcendent music bears powerful testimony of the divinity of the Son of God. Yet even within that sure witness, one song in particular lingered with me long after the final note. “Sometime We’ll Understand” doesn’t try to resolve life’s hardest questions. Instead, it gives voice to the space many of us live in daily: the quiet tension of trusting God when nothing seems to make sense.

Scripture is filled with individuals who lived in that space. Joseph was betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, and carried away into Egypt (Genesis 37). Mary and Martha sent word to Jesus when their brother was sick, pleading for Him to come before it was too late, only to watch Lazarus die before He arrived (John 11). Imprisoned in Liberty Jail during a harsh winter, Joseph Smith cried out, “O God, where art thou?” (Doctrine and Covenants 121). In each case, heaven seemed distant and understanding felt withheld. Yet they continued forward, trusting in God and choosing to “walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).

Looking back, each of these stories carries a quiet reversal. As the Lord teaches, “ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith” (Ether 12:6). Joseph’s life, which began in abandonment and betrayal, ultimately placed him in a position to preserve entire nations during a severe famine, fulfilling the truth that “all things work together for good to them that love God” (Romans 8:28).

When Jesus finally arrived at Bethany, Martha met Him with grief that sounds painfully familiar: “Lord, if thou hadst been here…” (John 11:21). From her perspective, the occasion for a miracle had already passed. Yet Christ revealed that the situation was not defined by timing, but by divine purpose beyond what they could see. Standing before the tomb, He declared, “I am the resurrection, and the life” (John 11:25). What seemed like absence became the setting for a greater understanding of who He truly was.

In Liberty Jail, heaven seemed distant and there was no immediate explanation for Joseph Smith’s suffering. Yet even within his anguish, there came a deeper assurance that although his trial wouldn’t be removed, it wasn’t meaningless. The Lord reframed Joseph’s suffering with eternal perspective: “All these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good” (Doctrine and Covenants 122:7). What felt like abandonment became, in time, an invitation to trust divine purposes beyond what could be seen.

Recently, my family has been walking through a trial that I do not fully understand, and I’ve found myself asking questions that lack satisfactory answers. In those moments, faith has not felt like clarity, but rather the decision to trust God while still carrying uncertainty. Tracy McMillan observed, “In the end, it will all work out. If it hasn’t worked out yet, it’s not the end.”

This season of my life is an invitation to exercise the principle taught in Proverbs: “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5). It isn’t easy to accept what can't yet be explained, especially when it touches something so personal. And yet, I have come to recognize that I am not the first to walk through unanswered questions, and I will not be the last. And at the center of it all stands Christ Himself.

The crucifixion of our Savior was not only an act of suffering, but a moment of profound confusion for those who had followed Him. The One they believed to be the Messiah hung on a cross, and with His death, their hopes and sense of direction appeared to end. For a time, it seemed as though silence had the final word. Yet the story was not finished. In the dawn of the third day, that silence was broken by the reality of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. What had seemed like the end was, in truth, the beginning of something far greater than they had understood.

That is the pattern running through all of these stories. Understanding doesn’t always come when we want it, but it isn’t absent simply because it’s delayed. The words of the song echo this,"Not now, but in the coming years…sometime with tearless eyes we’ll see what here we could not understand.” We can trust that even in our waiting, the Author and Finisher of our faith, whose “ways [are] higher than [our] ways” (Isaiah 55:8-9), is still writing what we cannot yet read (Hebrews 12:2).

Corrie ten Boom once said, “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.” Even in uncertainty, we are invited to move forward with hope, trusting that someday clarity will come. The chorus of “Sometime We’ll Understand” offers this comforting reassurance, “Trust in God through all thy days. Fear not, for He doth hold thy hand. Though dark thy way still sing and praise. Sometime, sometime we’ll understand.”

Avery Palenske is grateful for the opportunity to worship weekly in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.