There are some things about God that are hard to understand. Although God is all-powerful some people wonder why millions starve, get sick, are raped and/or abused. Some think God created everything and made it so well that everything is self sustaining, and afterward He simply sat back and watched life play out ever since. Some even say that God set up the elements necessary for evolution and let it go from there, but that He has had no direct influence or activity in life or the universe since. Others are inclined to think God is involved, but not as a provider, but rather as a disciplinarian. Those who die of an untimely death or horrible disease somehow deserve it?!
Clearly God is involved in our lives and even the world. Most of what He does for us goes unnoticed. We serve a God who cares, provides, and protects us.
1 Peter 1: verses 24-25
24 For, “All people are like grass,
and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
25 but the word of the Lord endures forever.”
We cannot understand how God's providence works or what God is doing or why He is doing it. God did not promise to remove all of our problems. However, He has promised to provide everything we need to be faithful and receive eternal life. We must be determined to serve Him faithfully at all costs. Wow, that is the hard part for me as I am sure it is for many others.
Here is how I understand life to be: There was this supreme being see, which hence forth I will refer to as God, so God is sitting there at his place and he's looking around at all this vast emptiness and decides to fill it with some things, so he goes !!!poof!!! and there is all the angels in heaven. Then God thinks something is missing there needs to be true love, he want's to feel the love of free will. Again he does the !!!poof!!! thing and there is all of mankind in the universe.
ReplyDeleteJust how all of this happened is questionable, yes, but that is not the point. We will never totally understand the "how" and I don't really think that we are supposed to. It shouldn't really matter anyway, over the ages we have gotten so hung up on the "how" that we have mistaken it for the "why". The "why" is the greatest reason that anything has ever happened, ever! The "why" is true love, God gave us free will, a soul and a brain. All these things allow us to truly love, hey "True Love" go figure. It is also all these things that makes us fallible, meaning the same things that allow us to feel the greatest feeling in the universe allow us to feel the horrific feelings too.
What I am getting at here is for all the things that we blame God for we need to take a good look at ourselves first. Some say God lets these awful things happen well I say "what did you do to stop or prevent it?" Now true, a singular person reading this blog might not individually have the power to stop something like cancer or a natural disaster but all these things that happen to us could ultimately be caused by us too and in the case of natural disasters you would think that by now we would figure out that we should move away from danger.
There is an old joke that I think illiterates my point well, it goes like this "There was this stubborn old lady stranded on the roof of her house during a flood, the water just kept rising and rising. Along comes one of the neighbors in his fishing boat, he pulls up to the house and says 'jump in I will take you to safety' the old lady says 'no thank you, I'm waiting for God to save me' so the neighbor leaves. Then along comes a police rescue boat which pulls up to the house and they tell her 'get in quick, the current is getting faster' to which she replies 'no thanks, I'm waiting for God to save me' so not having the time to waist on the old lady they leave too. Finally a rescue helicopter comes down to save her but she just waves them off and with other people around that want to be saved they leave to go find them. Eventually the water rises and sweeps the old lady away and she drowns, when the old lady gets to heaven she is standing before God she says 'God I had faith in you, why didn't you save me?' to which God replies 'I sent you two boats and helicopter what more did you want?.