God is Great

I distinctly remember the feeling I felt four years ago, as my knees shook inside an old train car. The air seemed a little colder inside the wooden vessel, but my blood was running a little hotter than usual. I could smell the wood was stained with the horror and the tragedy of a generation long gone. I was fifteen years old, and I was standing inside a transport car of a train used during the Holocaust. The reason my body felt so hot, was the amount of anger I was feeling towards those that could commit such an atrocity. However, the truth is, I was holding some anger towards a God that could allow something this horrible to take place.

When we stare in the face of crimes which rob families of their children, natural disasters which destroy the livelihood of an entire community, and horrifying, outrageous losses of life, how do we equate these events with the existence of a loving, all-powerful God? If there's a God who is all-powerful and created the universe, than how can tragedies happen? An even more pressing question would be: if I've served God and bend to His will, why are my parents getting a divorce, why did a loved one die, why did my Dad lose his job? How do we answer these questions?

We learned on Sunday that God created the world and everything in it (including humans) as a perfect creation, when sin entered into the world system, it corrupted every aspect of the universe (causing things like hurricanes, sickness, and even death). However, even though we can understand why tragedies would occur, it's hard to understand why God would allow one of His children to suffer. Well, as we know God is a perfect father, and in his perfection he allowed us to have free will, so that we could choose whether to love and follow Him or to follow our own path to destruction. Due to our free will, there are people who choose to cause suffering, and because of our sin, natural disasters are now part of our world system and often wreak havoc on our planet.

The good news is that God has provided us with a comforter when the world is crashing down and when our heart breaks. God has given us His Holy Spirit, so that we can be comforted in our sadness. Next week, we'll discuss this further, when we talk about what happens when tragedy does strike, where do we turn to, and what does God want us to do? But you have to be at HYPE on Sunday morning to figure out what God's plan is during our catastrophes.


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Pray
That you can begin to trust in God's love, when you don't know where to turn.