Skip to main content

Good


‘Ah Lord God! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and by Your outstretched arm! Nothing is too difficult for You, (Jeremiah 32:17)
          In the story I’m working on, there are some people who have vowed to die rather than to submit. They continue to say this after meeting Estaen and hearing about his dernai, but they find themselves unable to overcome the temptation to look to them for help when things aren’t going the way they want. In fact, they repeatedly ask Estaen why he and his dernai won’t help out. At one point, Zheann lists times when the dernai could have helped, but didn’t.
          Her complaints should sound familiar. The stereotypical response to anything bad that happens is “where was God?” or “Why did God allow this to happen?” If nothing is too difficult for God, why doesn’t he stop the bad things from happening? Why did He allow COVID-19 to develop and why doesn’t He make it go away? Is today’s verse a lie?
          Not surprisingly, the answer is “no.” Today’s verse tells the truth. It is we who lie. Some say that if God doesn’t make all the bad things go away, He either can’t be omnipotent, or He can’t be good. That’s not true. One way that God can be both omnipotent and good while allowing what we call bad is if we are wrong about it being bad. COVID-19 is an example of this. It is declared “evil” because people are made uncomfortable (sick) and because people die. I’m not saying that death is a good thing that we should all pursue at our earliest convenience, and I’m not saying that those people who decide to kill others aren’t doing something wrong, but neither can I say that death itself is the horrible thing that so many seem to believe. We tend to think that physical death is evil, but that doesn’t mean we’re right.
          So, for a few moments, what good has COVID-19 wrought in your life? Has it improved your relationship with God? With the people you’re closest to? With yourself? Has it made you more aware of things in your life you need to address? Have you started addressing any of them? Have you read any books that influenced your thinking? Have you made changes to your life or habits? Have you taken any steps at all to find good in life as it is now? If you haven’t, could it be that it is not God who is evil in allowing the coronavirus, but you who are evil for not working for what is good?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Way, The Truth, and The Life

              Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me . (John 14:6)           If “I am the gate of the sheep…I am the good shepherd” from chapter 10 is a double whammy, this verse is a triple whammy. And its first victim is the notion that any other so-called god was acceptable or the same as Jesus. He, and He alone is the way, the truth, and the life, and the only way to get to the Father. There is no other Savior, or Redeemer, according to Jesus. Now, to be fair, other religions will claim that their religion or god(s) are the only way. That is the nature of gods and of religions. If this and that are equally good and agree on what’s necessary, then this and that are the same thing, so there’s no need to from the other to one. If that’s the case, then why speak against the other or promote the one? There’s a song I’ve been listening to i...
Post a Comment
Read more