Why do bad things happen to good people? It is a question that has plagued mankind for
quite a while, especially when we believe in a loving God. After all, if God loves us, why does he allow
these things to happen? Why are guns
allowed into school buildings and planes to fly into buildings and bombs going
off at the end of races and chemicals to be used on civilians? Amy and I are going through this on a more
personal level as well, as Amy’s friend Hilary and her boyfriend Rob were
struck by a car while they were out riding a tandem bike on Monday. Rob unfortunately has passed away from the
injuries while Hilary is in critical condition.
So we are always left with the question, why do bad things happen to
good people?
Sadly,
there are no fulfilling answers. We have
free will and we make bad, harmful decisions.
It sucks, but that is all that there is.
We don’t believe in a God who kicks little old ladies down the stairs as
a sort of Karma or because He’s bored.
We believe in a God who loves us and cares for us enough that we are
given the ability to choose, to bind ourselves to him and His will or to bind
ourselves to the powers of darkness in all of its forms – intolerance, hate,
greed, self-importance. So pain is
allowed to happen, because it is simply the way of the world, a world that has
the ability to choose. But in our
suffering, whether through loss, disease, broken relationships, or anything
else, God is with us. God may not
prevent all the suffering in the world, but He is still part of the cure, since
we are given hope and we are given comfort in his presence and in one another,
whom God has gifted us with.
Now on with the Readings!
Per usual, from the daily lectionary.
Reading 1 – Isaiah 37:14-21 – God will not always be angry
and hide away, but instead will bring peace and healing.
I
particularly enjoy verses 17-18, where the people keep turning back to the ways
of sin, to the ways that take us apart from God and yet God says “I will heal
them, I will lead them and repay them with comfort.” Wow. I’m
always amazed whenever people say to me “The Old Testament is a vindictive,
merciless, bloodthirsty God” or “the Old Testament is all about law and
punishment.” The love that God shows us
in the New Testament is present throughout the Old Testament, as is the hope
and the continual forgiveness. God didn’t
change, just that way that the story is told.
A lot changes when God comes down and walks among us and dies on a
cross. But the motivation was always
there – God’s desire to be close to us, to love us, and to forgive us.
The
last two verses talk about the lack of peace for the wicked, but that lack of
peace is because we refuse to sit still, we refuse to pay attention to
God. We keep getting caught up in the
ever changing currents of life and trying to fulfill needs that can never be
met on our own power. We create all
this chaos and all this anxiety around us instead of listening to God and being
filled with the peace that God brings.
We create the chaos, which is a punishment enough for our worshipping
the gods of money and comfort and self.
God doesn’t have to punish us, because our lives, our own free will,
becomes punishment enough.
Thank
God that he is always here though, always right beside us and holding us and
comforting us, because without Him we would be completely and utterly hopeless
and lost. No matter how much we fight against
Him, He stays by our side and when we take the time to realize it, we find that
peace indeed.
Reading 2 – Luke 14:15-24 – Parable of a man who throws a
large party and invites all of his friends and they all have weak excuses to
not show up. So instead the man tells
the slaves to go and bring in all the poor and the lame and crippled and blind,
so that they might enjoy the feast.
After that, there is still room, so he tells the slaves to go and bring
in everyone they find in the streets and alleys.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaOzKDRF0D4 This is a video of Shane Clairborne from the
ELCA Youth Gathering. He is the
co-founder of The Simple Way and talks about treatment of the poor and
such. Give it a listen!
When I was first going through the candidacy process to get
into seminary, I had to sit before a committee and answer their questions. One of the people came off as very snotty,
but she had a point. She asked me about
my prayer life and I answered that honestly, at that time, I didn’t have much
of one. I prayed when I found time to
pray, which wasn’t daily. Her response,
where the tone really set me off, was “Well if God has time for you every day,
why don’t you have time for God?” Which
really puts me in the place of the guests who were not going to the party. “Well I have band” or “I have sports” or “I
have work” or “I just want to relax and not think about anything.” We have all these excuses and so many more to
not have active lives of faith, to ignore God and refuse the feast that is
right before us. We take time for
everything, except for God, plenty of times in our lives. But we can change that. There are 24 hours in a day, and 60 minutes
in each hour. Can’t each of us take at
least 10 minutes a day, or 1/144th of a day, to praise God, to pray
to God, to read scripture, to do something just for God? It doesn’t matter if we do it in the morning
or the afternoon or at night, but let each of us take those ten minutes to pray
or to read scripture or to meditate on God.
10 Minutes. I think we can do it,
and then we can grow upon that. But let’s
just start. If you are already there,
awesome! If not, we can do this
together.
Reading 3 – Psalm 119:65-72 – Thank you for humbling me and
teaching me your ways, Lord. If you had
not, then I would have continued to go astray.
When I
was in Clinical Pastoral Education, working as a chaplain at a retirement
village, I was prone to being very defensive.
I didn’t realize it, but I was. And
it drove my supervisor nuts. He would
try to instruct me, and I would keep coming back with reasons on why I was
doing what I was doing. So one day, in
the middle of the parking lot, and yet another round of me defending
everything, he just let loose, yelling at me for not actually wanting help and
wasting his time. Not exactly my most
shining moment. But it was also what I
needed in order to get past my hang-ups and to finally just listen to what he
had to say. I had to be humbled in order
to listen. I think we all need that at
times. When we are doing well and
everything we touch turns into gold, we become full of ourselves and we begin
to think to ourselves “I don’t need God.
Look at all that I’ve done.” But we
do need God, because without God we would have nothing. Everything we have is because God gave us
gifts and skills and people in our lives.
Left to our own devises, we would have and be nothing.
I said
that the beginning that everything happens because we live in a sinful world
and people have free choice. And that is
true. But that free will also helps us
to see life and to appreciate it and to learn from it. What we have is fleeting, and we need to make
the most of it. If we grow too fool of
ourselves and we worship ourselves, our money, our technology, and everything
else besides God, we lose some of the fullness of this life. We begin to get lost in the chaos and the
thrashing around, or we don’t see the beauty around is in each thing that God
has created. When the bad things happen
to good people, we are humbled and we can begin to see our need for God and the
hope and the healing that comes from experiencing God.
Let us Pray – Lord, help us always to be humble, that we may
not lose sight of you and all that you have done and continue to do in this
world. Help us to be your servants,
calling in everyone to come and see you and experience you. Help us to be honest, to genuinely love and
praise you every day, even on the days that we are filled with anger at you and
the injustice in this world. Guide us
and lead us each day. Amen.
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