Sunday, February 25, 2007

Is this world just a pile of poo?

Man this world seriously sucks sometimes. At the moment, I'm really noticing how rubbish it can be. A teenager from Rock was killed in a car crash over the weekend - how awful, I can only imagine the intense pain her family is going through - wasn't God powerful enough to stop it happening? I know far too many people who are being seriously affected by cancer at the moment - something I still bear the scars of, and am still in pain from. Is God not loving enough to stop this? Is God just looking on unsympathetically? Doesn't He care? Isn't He powerful enough to stop all the oo that's going on? I'm studying Habakkuk at the moment - its awesome coz its so real. Habakkuk throws these kinds of quesitons at God - looking at he messed up world around him, he cries out to God 'How long, O LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen?' - don't you care God? I love that these questions are asked in the Bible - they are not question that we should be afraid to ask - it is fine to cry out to God in the midst of a messed up world. And God answers Habakkuk, but He answers in a bizarre way, basically - he does care and he is gong to act, but the way he is going to act is far differenet from waht Habakkuk would expect, so again Habakkuk quesitons him. As Habakkuk questions God the second time, he again questions what God is doing - but as he does that he affirms who God is - he calls God 'my Rock' he calls him 'Yahweh' (God's name which reminds Israel that he is a God who keeps his promises). Even through quesitoning, we need to remember who God is - we may not understand always why God allows things to happen, but we can know that God is a God who keeps his promises - he is a rock, our unchanging comfort in hard times or good. God is good even when this world is rubbish. We always have reason to be joyfully - not necessarily a grinning like a cat type of joyfully, often just a deep joy that goes far deeper than circumstances. I want to be able to say with Habakkuk 'though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in God my Saviour'