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| The news seems always to be filled with various accounts of bad news and reports of evil deeds. We’ve become so calloused to it that only rarely does it hit home. A few weeks ago a local teacher and member of our church, Marty Layman-Mendonca was brutally beaten with a pipe while on a mission trip to Scotland. We talked with her, hiked with her, prayed with her, laughed with her – and our souls touched. When Marty was viciously assaulted, evil touched many of us personally and it rocked our world. While many in the Upper Valley were moved with compassion to give and serve sacrificially during the aftermath of devastating natural disasters, like Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico and the great tsunami that overwhelmed Southeast Asia, this was closer to home. When you know someone who is a victim of such brutality it does more than elicit feelings of compassion. It is deeply distressing and robs us of sleep. Disturbing pictures and thoughts fill our minds. We feel personally violated and we want justice. Almost immediately we plot vengeance and our minds work overtime to try to make sense out of a senseless act. We want reasons and explanations – anything that will help us understand. Our own inability to control the basic needs for safety and peace of those close to us is at best frustrating. At its worst it leads us to indict God for either his impotency or his indifference. But anger, frustration, vengeance, and blame are poor comforters. Where are we to turn? At such times as this our faith in the goodness of God is severely tested. If there is no God, there is nowhere else to turn. If God doesn’t care then he is of no real comfort. If God either chooses to be uninvolved or is unable to do anything to prevent such evil then he is of no use to us. If God does care and reign over human events then we are left with a mountain of unanswered questions that all start with “Why . . .?” The Scriptures do not pretend to answer such questions. Indeed, God does not condescend to explain himself to us. Instead, his Scriptures proclaim, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways, declares the Lord. For as high as the heavens are above the earth so are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9-10). If this were not true then he would not be worthy of our worship. So we are left to work through our pain and frustration by trusting God, whose judgments are unsearchable and whose ways are inscrutable (Romans 11:33). By faith we trust that, though we do not always understand God’s ways, He IS “working all things together for good” (Romans 8:28). We trust that he will ultimately establish justice on earth and in heaven. And our thirst for justice for the perpetrator of this evil is tempered by the deep realization that God extended mercy and grace to us. And so our congregation is asking God to take care of Marty. But we are also doing the unthinkable: we are praying for God’s grace to reach the man who did this. We long to see something eternally good come out of this evil. |
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by Dr. J. Patrick Curtis, Senior Pastor |
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