Injustice is a burden I carry in my heart and talk about any chance I get. So the question always comes up, "Why does God allow suffering?" My initial response (which hasn't changed, I've just added to it) is that I believe that God uses suffering (or whatever is in our lives) to draw us closer to Himself. God is a God of compassion and compassion means "to suffer with." God doesn't just see our suffering from afar - He's suffering right along side us.
So then what is His response to alleviate that suffering and bring healing? One of the most profound lines that I've been chewing on lately is Mark's line from InvisiblePeople.tv and his conversation with God where God's response was "I made you." Injustice is a sin and we as God's people are called to do God's work in fighting against it. We are His hands and feet - to be His physical presence and demonstrate His love to everyone, especially those who encounter injustice. Let us be people worthy of that calling - ready to stand in the gap.
"The people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the foreigner, denying them justice.
'I looked for someone among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found no one. So I will pour out my wrath on them and consume them with my fiery anger, bringing down on their own heads all they have done,' declares the Sovereign LORD.”
~Ezekiel 22:29-31
Have you read Evolving in Monkey Town by Rachel Held Evans? She struggles to come to terms with suffering & God's response. She writes: "...yet the widows and orphans I met in India were actually less angry with God than I was. In fact, they loved him in a way I couldn't quite understand. Laxmi told me, 'When I remember my life before HIV and compare it with how I am today, I am thankful. Were it not for my HIV, I never would have met Jesus. I would not have found salvation and hope.'
ReplyDeleteAfter my return to the States, when my pastor asked the congregation to pray for the funds to repave the church parking lot, I privately asked God to take care of Kanakaraju's family first. It wasn't that I thought God was incapable of doing both. I guess I just figured that if prayer made any difference at all, it was more important that Kanakaraju have a mother than that my church have new blacktop.
In India, I began to suspect that perhaps the problem lies not in God's goodness but in how we measure it."