Readings:
Ecclesiasticus 35:12-17;
Psalm 84:1-7; 2
Timothy 4:6-8,16-18;
Luke 18:9-14

Collect
Merciful God,
teach us to be faithful in change and uncertainty,
that trusting in your word and obeying your will
we may enter the unfailing joy of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen 

Reflection - Where Is God In The Midst of Tragedy?

Lord, we are angry
angry at how our world can be ripped apart
angry at things we didn’t notice
angry that happened

The above sentence is the part of the opening statement when we gathered in the evening of Sunday 16^th November at Servant King Church, Furzton for the service of quiet reflection and prayer following the unbelievable event that our community had witnessed few days prior. The sad event has left anyone with an ounce of humanity in them feeling angry, sad, disappoint and discomforted that these sort of vile thing could happen literarily on our door steps without us having a clue until it was too late. 

The pertinent question in the mind of most people is how did this happened?, but at a much deeper level it would have caused Christians to ask why did God allow tragedy like this to happen? Folks who don’t believe in God will rightly ask why did this happen if indeed there is God? Both set of people here have every right to think and question God this way as our community seeks some sort of answer to this very sad event. 

I have had causes to ask the same question in the past and it’s something I have been thinking about in the past week and I conscious that there is great danger in offering theological response or perspective to this question as may end up become cold and calculating which may compound the pain that people are already feeling. I’m also aware that some Christians considers it a blasphemy for anyone to ask this sort of question in the first place, because they believe asking God “why” in our time of trouble is a sin.

I don’t agree with this type of Christian response to tragedy because it is both inhuman and unbiblical. When we search through the pages of the bible, we will discovered that it is filled with several instances of people asking God similar pertinent questions in their time of tribulation. The books of Psalms and Job are filled with lamentations of godly men crying out to God in despair as they search for answer; David declared in Psalm 13:1-2 “How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, Having sorrow in my heart all the day? How long will my enemy be exalted over me?”. Therefore if you are feeling angry, sad, disappoint and discomforted, you are not doing anything wrong and it is no sin that you are searching for answer by asking God why.

While I don’t have an answer to this question, what I can share is my reflections and my view about God in the midst of our troubles. The questions raises two fundamental things about the nature of God, the first is that God is good and the second is that God is sovereign over all things. When we put both together in the light of this question, it presupposes that “if God is good, he must also be powerful enough not to let this happen?”. Yes, God is good and powerful, but the existence of evil in the world is not a confirmation that there is no God or that God is absent from the world, hence why bad things happen in our world.

We must identify the fact that we have all been created by God with power of choice (free will) and most of the evil we see around us today results from the choices that people are making using their free will. While God desires that we do his will to enable us live in a world that is free from the evil that comes with the power human choice, yet he will not force his will on humanity. Therefore, what I have come to realise as the root cause of human miseries the choices that we all make every day. In the light of the event of this past week, the question to each of us that we should consider is – “how am I using my free will (power of choice)?”, are we using it to make the world a better place?

Finally, God is not absent in the midst of our challenge, he is right there with us feeling the same hurt and anger that we feel and his heart breaking at what we are going through as a community. I know that it may be difficult to comprehend for some of us, but our response at this time is to trust that God is at work in creation. On Sunday evening we prayed….

God, in Christ you showed us
That you are not removed from us
But share in our agony and suffering.
You are the parents whose hearts are broken,
You are the police seeking justice,
You are the forensic scientists searching for clues,
You are the neighbours in shock and confusion,
You know and suffer our human condition.
Be with us now as we come together to reflect, pray
and place the hurt of our community into your hands. Amen.

My thoughts and prayers are with the Crouchers at this incredibly difficult time.

Adedayo Adebiyi