I DO GET THAT!

I’ve been asked numerous times over my life time, Why would God do THAT? (whatever THAT is) or Why would God let that happen?  To be honest with you, I’ve never had a sufficient answer other than, I don’t know.  What I do know is that sometimes we forget we have something to do with what does happen. In fact, we contribute to what happens. 

Over time we begin to minimize OUR contribution to the mess, chaos and unpredic- tability of this life. We are profane, polluted and perverse. We lie, cheat, steal. We get angry, retaliatory, vengeful. We are not content, we lust, are held captive. We are prideful, arrogant, resistant. We kill, murder, destroy. All of OUR actions and deeds get scattered upon the landscape of this life. And when the landscape gets a little discorded, we for some reason, always cast a questioning glance towards heaven and inquire of God, WHY?  That's our humanity.

You do understand that God provided us ALL with a realm in which we ALL are able to choose. Sometimes in our choosing our contributions don’t seem as horrendous or devastating compared to other contributions, but how does one determine the effects of it ALL upon life?  You throw one piece of trash on the ground and think, no big deal. But if a million people do the same at the same moment, well, you have a million pieces of trash impacting the environment.  So the problem is we ALL contribute to the mess but for some reason we constantly desire, pray to, want God to protect us, promote us, sustain us AND to clean up all the mess around us each and every day as if we had little to do with it ALL. That’s ridiculous isn’t it? People drink, drive and crash a piece of metal into another vehicle and we cry out, Why did You allow that to happen God!? Or we question why He didn't stop it or prevent it from happening.

We also don’t have that same attitude about our actions impacting the world like we do with a tragic accident. Because to us, they’re just not the same. We lash out at someone in anger, spite and let loose from our mouth unretrievable words that wound, wilt and war.  These moments, these actions, to most of us, are minimized contributions to the ongoing crookedness upon the earth and mankind. But in reality it ALL makes a mess. Christians, non-christians . . .we ALL contribute to the discord and disruption and then in our limited view, knowledge and understanding ask of God, what are you doing about this?  We want Him to fix it.

God is God, Psalm 115:3. I don’t pretend to know or understand all the ways of God, how could I, why would I think that I could?  Why would I worship, follow, serve a God that I could understand, define, put in a box? So why would we pursue reducing God from the omniscient to the explainable in our frailty and frustrations? So we could understand it ALL? Hmmm?

To take God OUT of the picture is even more absurd? How in the world does this pale blue dot keep precisely spinning and not self-destruct from all our abuse, neglect and ignorance.  Who really does HOLD ALL things together? On any given day we are oblivious to the hand of God; His sovereignty, His protection, His care, His love. Hardly ever do we thank him for the things He HAS prevented, changed, orchestrated so as to not allow harm or evil to come upon us.  I think we would be startled, amazed, shocked at what God DOES do on a daily basis. Maybe if we could grasp a little bit of that piece we’d maybe work at minimizing our contributions to the mess. AND instead of blaming God, pointing a finger or throwing up our hands in complete bewilderment, we'd yield to what we do KNOW. God has contributed the greatest gift. He offers the greatest invitation. He loves us. He died for us. He overcame death. He's coming back for us. He promises an eternal home. I do get that!