A year ago yesterday, I was at the GT v. UGA football game watching my team get slaughtered. My girlfriend at the time, Rebecca, who also happened to be a UGA student, was there with me as well as two of her UGA friends … needless to say, it wasn’t the most fun I’ve ever had at a Tech football game. On top of the terrible defeat, I felt sort of bad because I had chosen to go to the game over spending another day with my family from out of town; but really, I see them every year and they were big college football fans, so I knew they’d understood. Anyway, as I left the game and was walking back to the Marta station with Rebecca and her friends I decided to check my phone and see if anyone had called during the game, as I couldn’t hear anything while I was in the stadium. Sure enough I had four missed calls … two from my house, one from my sister’s cell phone, and one from my mom’s cell phone; “Something must have happened” was the thought that ran through my mind.
Rebecca held back with me while her friends walked ahead and I hesitantly put the phone to my ear to listen to the messages. The voice of my father revealed the terrible news that my aunt, uncle and cousin Erin had been in a bad car wreck on the way back to Alabama and my family was going to hospital to be with them. Josh and Amy, the other two siblings in the family were on the way also. I had no news on their conditions, but I called my dad back and he told me to go home and call him when I got there … still, there was no indication of anything.
Rebecca’s friends went north on Marta and she and I went south. But the southbound train got stuck, delaying things even more. Eventually, my mother called to see if I was home yet. Her voice was shaky and I could tell that she had been crying. I asked what had happened and she sort of whimpered, “just go home and be with Suzanne and call us from there.” At that moment, I knew that at least one of them had not made it. As the train began to move again I wrapped my arms around Rebecca’s leg from my seat and wept. I couldn’t control it … someone I loved very much, and I didn’t even know who, had been taken from this world and from my life!
I took Rebecca home and called my mom on the way back to my house and finally got her to tell me everything. As it turned out, both my aunt Nita and cousin Erin had been killed, leaving uncle Jimmy without a wife and youngest daughter, Josh and Amy without a mother and little sister, and everyone with questions. Why? Why us? Shouldn’t their lives have had more?
If any of you have lost someone that you loved, then you know, it hurts.
I lost two family members because some lady didn’t see a stop sign. Little children die every day in Africa because it doesn’t rain enough. It seems like God could stop that if He wanted to, doesn’t it?
Well, that is one of the biggest objections to Christianity out there. How can a truly loving God with infinite power allow evil and suffering? Why do “good people” die young and why don’t only the “bad people” suffer? Well this morning I am going to do my best to offer and explanation for the existence of evil in a world that is supposed to be watched over by an all powerful, loving God.
Who likes to get shots? … Me too, I love’em! No… no one likes getting shots. I remember when I was a little 6 year old boy being so certain that getting a shot was the worst thing that could possibly happen to me that it took 6 nurses to hold me down. I was kicking and screaming and crying. I mean, when you are 6, there is nothing worse than the doctor’s office. My mom used to tell me that we were just going for a ride so that I’d get in the car… AND I BELIEVED HER! Anyway, even now, but especially when you are a little kid, your parents and the doctor know a little bit more than you about what is good for you in the long run. It really just comes down to the fact that they have seen more, and they know more, and that little big of pain that comes in a shot is going to make your body stronger and help keep you from the bigger pain of getting sick.
Just like the doctor knows more than the patient, God knows more than us. We are on different intelligence levels… My mom used to always say, “Will you don’t know everything.” Do you think that Mary ever said, “Jesus, you don’t know everything”? And Jesus is just thinking, “Hmm, I could really show her.”
God knows everything. He knows every situation, at every time; he knows everyone’s heart and everyone’s thoughts. There is nothing that God can’t see and there will never be anything that will make God say, “Huh, I didn’t see that one coming…”
So what I’m getting at is this: God allows us to experience little pains and sufferings here and there because He knows that it will work out better for us in the end. Now all of this might spark a question in some of you ...
The question I was looking for was “so Will, are you saying that losing your aunt and cousin in a car wreck can be counted as a “little” pain and suffering? Obviously, the answer is no. My cousin and I were very close, as were my aunt and I, and being at that funeral and seeing them put into the ground was probably the most difficult thing I have ever been through. And you know what? When I die, I’m fairly sure that I will be able to look back over my life and still say that of all the stuff I have gone through on this earth … of all my earthly experiences, that was one of the worst.
So the reason that I say “little pains and sufferings” is this. If you have a Bible, turn to Philippians 3:8 with me.
What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ.
Compared to knowing Christ; in other words, compared to what we will experience in Heaven, our most prized possessions on this earth are trash! They are worthless!
Now let’s look at that from the other side. Mother Teresa is quoted as having said "In light of Heaven, the worst suffering on earth, a life full of the most atrocious tortures on earth, will be seen will be seen to be no more serious than one night in an inconvenient hotel."
So what?!? So I’ve made it clear that in the scheme of things our suffering and our pain will seem small and that God allows us to suffer so that we can grow stronger and closer to Him through our sufferings … But our God is an all powerful God! Why can’t He make it so that we can get closer to Him without all the confusion and hurt? Well I made a little diagram that I hope will be able to explain a little bit more of God’s logic in creating our world.
You see, God didn’t create pain and suffering and God didn’t create sin; God created humans knowing that sin would be an issue. If there were no possibility for sin, then there would be no purpose for the human race. We wouldn’t truly love God and we wouldn’t truly love each other. We would get along because we didn’t have a choice. Yea, there would be no pain and suffering, but there would also be no emotion. So God allows us to suffer because He has allowed us to make mistakes. And when we make those mistakes, we realize more and more that we need God … we need a personal God who can give our lives purpose when we think that we have no purpose. We need a God who loves us when we feel like no one loves us. We need a God who can sympathize with our sufferings and our pains. Did you know that every terrible feeling that you have had and every horrible day you’ve been through, God has felt that exact thing? When Jesus took on the sins of the world hanging on that cross, He took everything that came along with them. Every bit of evil and suffering in the world is ultimately the result of sin, and so when he took the penalty for all of the world’s sins, Jesus experienced all of the world’s hurt. You want to talk about a God who loves you? Jesus loves you so much that he stepped out of heaven and took the penalty for each and every one of us individually so that when we suffer, He suffers with us and we suffer with Him. That is how suffering brings us closer to God! We share it with Him. God didn’t have to do that for us. He chose to step out of heaven so that he could be a personal God to each of us. And I truly believe that when we are finally with Him in heaven, we will thank God for our little sufferings here and there because we will be able to look back on each discomfort and see how God defeated it and used it to help us grow closer to Him.
