With Lovingkindness Have I Drawn You...

"The Lord has appeared of old to me, saying,
Yes, I have loved thee with an everlasting love;
Therefore, with lovingkindness have I drawn you..."
Jeremiah 31: 3

If God is Good is the title of a new book by Randy Alcorn. I am wading my way through this challenging book and hope to bring to this blog some of the issues he discusses regarding the very human questions we ask when we encounter evil. 

If God is Good, the skeptic will say, how can there be evil in the world? If He is all powerful, why doesn't He intervene? If He loves us, how can He allow us to suffer? We can avoid the questions and throw scriptures at the dissenter to silence them, but, when suffering hits us directly, when pain overwhelms our senses, when unimagined evil invades our own lives, we struggle to find an answer that calms our fears and satisfies our trembling heart.

For anyone who has suffered from pain and suffering without understanding why; for those who have suffered the severing of a relationship that was more precious than life; for those who have never experienced the joy of human love that was their birthright; for those who cannot even imagine a God who loves them, I hope to bring to this blog the reality of God's unspeakable love for you, no matter what.

I do not speak to you from “above the fray.” I speak to you as one who has been there myself. I have had my own struggles, my own fears, my own doubts. I have wondered, especially regarding children, how could a loving God allow a child to be born to abusive parents? If God is love, where is He when an innocent child is trashed and beaten by the very parents that were supposed to protect him? Where is God? He knew before hand that this would happen in this child's life. Why did He allow it? Would it not have been better for the child to never have been born? Pro-abortion proponents have used this as an argument to end the life of the child. Even Job, in the depths of his suffering, cried out that he should never have been born. (Job 3:1)

As I was wrestling with my own doubts recently, I asked God that very question, He shocked me with His answer. “I looked beyond the pain and saw a child I would call My own...” That's what He told me. He so deeply wanted a love relationship with the child that He gave him the opportunity to breath – to live – to find God along the way and fall head over heals in love with Him. To have a love relationship with the Father that transcends any evil that he/she would ever experience in this life. To live with Him, in the shelter of His love forever, no matter what happens this side of heaven.

Does God see us when we are abused, rejected, treated with cruelty by those we thought would love us? Does He care? Or, is He the author of the abuse? I believe He sees us and He loves us more than we can even begin to understand. He is with us in it all. He is irrevocably on our side. He is praying for us. He is drawing us closer and closer to Himself. Sometimes, it is exactly because of the pain that we begin to turn to Him for comfort in our agony.

This is not a fairy tale. This is Truth speaking to us over the Lie. This is the triumph of good over evil. Of love over hate. Of hope over despair. This is the God who loves you...