The evening’s news was headlined by the horror of the terrorist attack in the mall in Nairobi. One of the women who escaped reported that “Bullets were flying everywhere. God saved me.”
Sixty-five plus people were killed. Obviously God did not save them. This supposed fickleness of God has bothered me all my life. Does He really save some and not others? Or is it random chance? If He does save some, why some? Does He love some more than others? Maybe none of the other 65 was a Christian? Does He only save Christians? If so being a Christian would turn into having a life insurance policy? There are situations where an accident only involves persons from the same church. An example would be a busload of teens where some are killed some are not. The question becomes much more difficult to answer. Our answers rarely end up saying anything nice about God. He ends up looking fickle, discriminating, selfish and uncaring.
So what’s the answer? There is an element of His care. Psalm 91 speaks of thousands falling around us and we are left standing. We pray and our prayers are answered: sometimes yes and sometimes no. That is the bothersome issue. Why the “no” answers? I don’t know. I wish I did. The older I become the less I seem to know. However, this I do know. We need to be careful we do not inadvertently make God look bad. We try to say nice things but we end up trashing Him.
I know I must trust Him. Proverbs 3 says, “Trust in the Lord with all our heart and lean not on your own understanding.” My “understanding.” That’s the hard part.
Written by Roger Bothwell on September 24, 2013
Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
Rogerbothwell.org