People often wonder how does God care about us, if there is so much evil in the world. God does love you…more than any words can make you understand. There is a God-shaped hole in every human heart. He created us with a desire to fellowship with Him. There is nothing in this world that will satisfy that desire. But loving a God you can’t see or touch can be hard. Talking to a God you can’t hug is hard.
When our lives are going good, we have this still small voice in the back of our heart. We can hide it with the sounds of friends and jobs and romance and fun. But all those things still leave us with a hole unfulfilled. When God allows tragedy to come into our lives…we can see the emptiness in the things we have filled our days with. When our fairweather friends have all moved on, we can hear the voice that has been there all along.
For all the amazing experiences that we have are vapor. Left unchecked a human will run headlong through life, filling his days with busy self importance. Then, in the moment of his death, he will know that everything he has done was nothing. He will stand in front of a God who has created mountains and destroyed dynasties and breathed life into dirt. He will stand before this God, and when God says ‘What have you done to deserve to live in my presence forever?’ What will this man hold up to God? What has he done that will make him worthy of being in the presence of the most powerful creature you could imagine? Why would he let you live in His house forever? The pathetic rags of our accomplishments are an insult to a holy God.
But what if God, in His infinite wisdom and love, allows a bit of the heartbreak and horror of that moment to touch our lives before we die? What if He allows you to understand what a broken frail creature you are now, so you can find a sacrifice to take with you into that throne room? What if He gave you the answer? When we are broken, we are willing to listen and seek. And in seeking we find the answer to all of our questions. When we find God, and let Him fill the hole in our hearts, then we will find satisfaction and peace and joy. But we are stubborn creatures. We want to do it ourselves. We won’t accept the gift of God’s love until we have fallen flat on our face, and proved that we can not do it.
And He loves us enough to let us do that. He waits quietly, with tears in His eyes, as we hurt ourselves and others. When we have exhausted every other option, and we are flat on our face broken and bruised, we say ‘I can’t do anymore, help me!’ ..and He is there. He helps us pick up the pieces, and mend the fences, and build a far better life than we had before. People always ask why God allows bad things to happen… my question is why do we destroy everything we touch, trying to prove we can do something that we will never be able to do?
