Exodus 15:13
“In your unfailing love you will lead the people you have redeemed. In your strength you will guide them to your holy dwelling.”
February has been a month of studying the redeeming power of Christ. I just concluded a study on suffering and seeking to understand why God chooses to allow suffering in our lives. Pain, hurt, ache, brokenness, sorrow, loss, depravity, immorality and the like all lead us to the question of “why?” My study was quick to challenge the question instead to become “what now Lord?”
Our World Racers on the field have experienced their own sense of redemption (see http://elizabethuhles.theworldrace.org) – even in the face of extreme loss. From orphaned children to those unable to maintain life, it has been a month of seeking to understand God’s redemption.
We believe truths about God: that He is good, that He is loving, that He is innately trustworthy. Yet we attribute these things to God in the face of evidence that (in our finite position) seems contrary to who He is. We have faith enough to believe that God hasn’t changed or isn’t changing but are still so often unsatiated by the answer that “God is in control” when He just doesn’t seem to be.
The entirety of my study on suffering came to a holistic point: pain and suffering entered the world through sin, it was the merciful response (when “the wages of sin is death” and we are given life, albeit with pain), God doesn’t just sit idly by and sadistically watch us suffer, he engaged with our suffering through Christ so that we would never be able to point our finger at God and say “you don’t understand!”, He offers redemption and the hope of an eternity without pain, without suffering – perfect as it was always intended for us to be.
These principles give us hope and some comfort – though don’t always mean ease through the valley. Still, we hold on to the fact that God is our redeemer and that regardless of our pain, He still works all things out for the good of those who love Him.
