I was asked recently why God allows evil to afflict the believer. God doesn't. We do. There are happenings in our daily lives (some have more than others) that we simply don't understand. Making sense of the senseless seems like an exercise in futility. Well, it is. My 14 year old daughter said that the Bible confuses her. I told her that it does to me too in areas. For instance, why my brother died of leukemia at 57. Yes, he was a believer and yes he is with Jesus and yes, I miss him. I can't make sense of his death. However, I can make sense of how he lived. He was brave beyond measure knowing the cancer would take him when it pleased. Why did God allow this to happen? Perhaps I will never know. I know my brother wouldn't have wanted me to not go on in life as so many do. He would want me to go on, use his story to give hope to others, and to strengthened my resolve to help people where I can. The Bible is many things. It's most confusing when our lives seem to be the furthermost from what God wants.
I hate when people tell me, "God has a reason." I'm sure he does. However, if He doesn't tell me, that reason really doesn't do me any good. There have been events (traumatic) in my life over he years that made no sense to me. Yet, over time, God has brought me to a space where I was able to minister to others because I had already faced their adversity. Seemingly senseless happenings waited for years (often) to come full circle to where I had the "Aha!" moment. More than once I've found myself saying "So that's why that happened!" It doesn't make any sense at the time and renders verses in the Bible suspect because I don't like waiting. However, there are reasons which only God knows for letting things happen in my life intending that "down the road" they will be used to minister to someone in a like situation. Often people, like me, don't want to hear how this or that makes sense from God's view point. Sometimes, like with me, the "learning" only takes place after I have pulled down my walls and told God that I give up.
Often we don't want to admit how things make sense. For instance, have you ever read the book of Revelation? For those of you who have read this book there is an element of "I don't want to know." present. For the Christian there is a prophecy or foretelling of future history and outcome of the very things that don't make sense to us now. The Bible says the world must be worse than the days of Noah and the flood before Jesus comes back to take us home and defeat evil once and for all. There are reasons why we avoid statements like this. We don't like the "sense" that they tell us will come. The mark of the beast. The persecution of the Christian. The number of people we know who will not be prepared for the event (they are not saved). The knowledge that we may be called upon to die for our faith even as our children will be. Yet, the time hasn't come and that makes sense and no sense. The end of the story may well be seen as depressing for those who are perishing and foolishness to them who don't believe.
Here is my suggestion. Take life one day at a time and surrender that day to God. Do what he wants us to do the best we can from hour to hour that day. Keep our focus on "today I belong to God." If we focus on the past and the senseless things that have taken place (like the Holocaust), or the future over which we have no control, we aren't able to live in today. We exchange the sensible of today for the senseless of yesterday and tomorrow. How do you want to live? Who do you want to have peace for today with what sense there is in today? Sometimes we need to abandon ourselves and just let God live through us moment by moment. Knowing Jesus is all the preparation we need to make sense of tomorrow and yesterday.
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