God? Why didn’t you stop it? Are you there, do you care?
What is God up to? That is a question that will come up in your life someday. And as unsettling as it is, it’s a question we need to ask.
We should be the most heartbroken, we should be the most generous in support of those who have been injured by that kind of event; but at the same time we don’t need to flinch, and we don’t need to hide, and we don’t need to go looking for ridiculous answers to the questions of “where was God, and why was God,” because we know from the Old Testament, from day one, all the way through the New Testament, that God has consistently used nature and consistently used weather — whether it’s famine, flood, wind, rain, lack of rain, pestilence, storms, lightning, you name it — to get people to ask the very question I’m challenging you to ask.
The prophets of Baal and other false gods would say, “If my god can’t make it rain and your God made it rain, then who is this God?” Just as Jesus died, there was an earthquake that shook the place, and the sky became dark. The very Centurion who had overseen the crucifixion looked up and said, “Truly, this was the son of God.” In that moment, he recognized who he was dealing with. This is God’s way.
The truth is, we may not like the answer. But when nature wreaks havoc on humanity, it is evidence that God is great, and God is good, and He’s the God who would not, and could not, turn a blind eye to sin — even our sin against the environment, in one form or another.
But can God, will God, ever do something about the storms of life? That’s where we will pick up with the story next week.
In the name of the One who can do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine,
Bruce Jones, Pastor and Co-Creator,
Imagine Church of the Carolinas
