God, What are you doing?

Have you ever felt bold enough to ask that question? God, why in the world are you allowing this to happen? God, what are you doing? God, why did you do that thing you did in the Bible? It does not make much sense to us and can leave us rather uncomfortable. Last night my confirmation class struggled with this question as we were reading about the Exodus. They wondered about how God treated the Egyptians and that if he loved them, why did they suffer so? These are good questions for them to be asking, and I am happy to see them asking these, because it means that they are trying to put together the different things that they know about God.

My hunch is that there are times when we all ask this question, and whether we are asking it because we are reading something in the Bible that doesn't make sense, or whether we are trying to understand the things that are going on in the world around us, there are times when that question comes up. So what is the answer? I wish I knew. But the fact of the matter is that I am not God. But I can tell you what I think.

God is bigger than we are. His ways are not our ways; his thoughts are not our thoughts. So his reasoning for the things that did happen or are happening may be so far beyond our ability to understand that it is not even funny. However, here is something that we can understand. God always does the right thing. He is unable to do anything else. We know that he desires people to be in relationship with him. We know that he wants to remove from us, sin and evil and everything that we would set up as being more important than he is. Here is the point, God is worthy of our trust. He is not going to act in a way that is contrary to his character or how he has revealed himself to us in the Scripture. So even when it may be hard to understand, we can take great comfort in knowing that God indeed knows what he is doing, and that in the end, he will work all things together for the good of those who love him in Christ Jesus.

May you know that hope this week and always.

 

Sincerely,

Pastor CJ