Letter to God

Dear God –

Why?

In this world we do a pretty good job of destroying each other’s lives.   Mass killings have

become the norm.  Civil war rages in Syria, killing tens of thousands.  Roadside bombs still explode in Iraq.  Drone strikes take the lives of the ‘target’ and all around them.  It’s easy to explain these by talking of ‘sin.’  We live in a world where you give us the freedom to hurt each other.   People suffer because other people cause pain.   Cause and effect.  I get that.

Then come tornadoes like the one that slammed through Moore on Monday.  Dozens lost their lives, including children hiding in the basement of a school.  Many more recover from injuries the tornado caused.  Entire areas of town have been obliterated: homes lost, school destroyed, businesses no longer exist.  How do we explain these things? 

The American cliché is to blame these events on things like ‘homosexuality’ or ‘abortion.’  People want a quick and easy answer…and scapegoat.  They say, “If only we could be a holy land then these things wouldn’t happen.”  Back in your son Jesus’ day the Pharisees thought the same thing, but Jesus didn’t exactly agree with them! I’d argue that the sin of greed runs much more rampant in our land, but nobody seems to blame that.    It hits too close to home.

These simplistic answers take away the theological challenge of the whole event.  If you are all powerful (and we claim that you are) you could have stopped the tornado, right?  If you didn’t choose to stop it that means that you chose to allow the tornado to rip through Moore!  Stories have begun to surface of people who were miraculously saved.  They credit you for doing something to protect them in times of danger.  But God, what about those who died?  I find it hard to believe that you would go out of your way to protect one person while standing idle while the swirling winds took another’s life.  I don’t get it.   I join the writer of the Psalms, “My soul is in deep anguish.  How long, Lord, how long?” 

I have to admit that now that the destruction has come it’s becoming easier to see you at work.  I see you in the rescue workers, desperately seeking for survivors.  You are in the people of the Red Cross, providing food and shelter to your people in need.  You are in the crisis counselors who speak to the suffering.  You are anonymous people all over Moore who provide a shoulder to cry on.  You are in the people throughout the world who send money to help rebuild.   You are at work in the prayers of people near and far who reach out to those in Moore.

Why?  I could go on for hours, argue point after point, and in the end I won’t have an answer.  I’m simply left with your mercy, your love for your children, and the salvation that you promise through Jesus.  Even the pain of death is not final, for you are the one who conquered death forever.

May you use us to care for those in need in these dark days.  Comfort those in pain.  Feed those who hunger.  Clothe those who lost everything.   You work in the midst of a world of destruction.  Care for your people, Lord.

Your son,

Pete