On Easter Sunday, I attended a performance of Rob Gardner’s oratorio Lamb of God. Following the final week of Christ’s mortal ministry, the production’s transcendent music bears powerful testimony of the divinity of the Son of God. Yet one song lingered with me long after the final note.
“Sometime We’ll Understand” doesn’t try to answer life’s hardest questions. Instead, it gives voice to the place many of us know well: the quiet tension of trusting God when nothing makes sense.
Faith Begins Where Understanding Ends
Scripture is filled with people who lived in that space. Joseph was betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, and taken to Egypt (Genesis 37). Mary and Martha sent for Jesus when Lazarus became sick, pleading for Him to come before it was too late, only to watch their brother 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 story, heaven seemed silent. Understanding remained out of reach. Yet they kept moving forward, choosing to “walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).
Looking back, we can see what they could not.
The Lord teaches, “Ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith” (Ether 12:6). Joseph’s betrayal eventually placed him in a position to preserve nations during a devastating famine, revealing that “all things work together for good to them that love God” (Romans 8:28).
God Is Working Beyond What We Can See
When Jesus finally arrived in Bethany, Martha met Him with grief that sounds painfully familiar: “Lord, if thou hadst been here…” (John 11:21). From her perspective, the opportunity for a miracle had already passed.
But Christ showed that God’s purposes are never limited by our timelines. Standing before Lazarus’s 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.
Liberty Jail tells a similar story. Heaven seemed distant, and Joseph Smith received no immediate explanation for his suffering. Yet even within his anguish, the Lord gave him something greater than answers: 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 an invitation to trust God’s purposes beyond what he could see.
Choosing to Trust in the Middle of the Questions
Recently, my family has been walking through a trial I still do not fully understand. I have found myself asking questions without satisfying answers. During this season, faith has not looked like certainty. It has looked like choosing to trust God while carrying uncertainty.
Tracy McMillan said, “In the end, it will all work out. If it hasn’t worked out yet, it’s not the end.”
This season has become an invitation to live the wisdom of 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. Yet I have realized I am not the first person wrestling with unanswered questions. I will not be the last.
The Resurrection Changes Everything
Christ stands at the center of every story.
The crucifixion was not only a moment of unimaginable suffering. It was also a moment of profound confusion for those who followed Him. The One they believed was the Messiah hung on a cross, and with His death, it seemed their hope had died too.
For a time, it seemed as though silence had the final word. But the story was not over. In the dawn of the third day, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ shattered that silence. What looked like the end became the beginning of something greater than anyone had imagined.
Sometime We’ll Understand
That is the pattern woven through each of these stories. Understanding does not always come when we want it. But delayed understanding does not mean absent understanding. The words of the song capture that hope: “Not now, but in the coming years… sometime with tearless eyes we’ll see what here we could not understand.”
Even while waiting, we can trust the Author and Finisher of our faith. His “ways are higher than our ways” (Isaiah 55:8–9), and He is still writing the story 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 can keep walking in hope. We can trust that one day, God will make clear what we cannot yet understand.
Until then, the chorus of “Sometime We’ll Understand” offers this gentle assurance: “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.”
