A helpful question from Rich Dixon:

+++

I’m struggling to process the last 3-4 weeks.

I tend to be a bit single-minded. It’s difficult to turn away from images of carnage and mass murder, and I zoom in on my sense of outrage and helplessness.

How can life simply go on? Why doesn’t everyone, including Jesus, share my 24/7 angst? I want someone to do something about the naked evil occurring before our eyes. How can Jesus see this horror and do…nothing?

+ + +

“Do I really believe what I believe?”

It’s a question I ask myself frequently. Helps me remember the gap between what I profess in easy times, and my thoughts & behaviors when things get tough.

It’s also a reminder. More than one thing can be true at once.

• Jesus loves the world, and every single person, more than I can imagine. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son…”
• Jesus sees the world from a perspective on a time frame I don’t understand.
• Jesus is working, right now. In bomb shelters, refugee camps, politics. At our Home of Hope.
• Jesus could stop it. Right now.

+ + +

On Ash Wednesday I shared Saloni’s story of rescue and restoration. Even knowing the outcome, we have questions.

Where’s justice? Why did her mom die in bondage while an innocent child endured so much trauma? What about other children and woman who weren’t rescued?

It feels like a cop-out, from the comfort of American suburbia, to say, “Leave it to Jesus, He’ll handle it.”

I don’t think that’s the promise.

Do what you can, where you are, with what you have – and trust Him for the outcome.

Jesus, help us know what we can do – and do it.

And please, help us trust you for the ultimate outcome.