I didn’t think I’d write about this today but I think I’m supposed to.
I knew what sin was before I left the states. I knew that it was ugly, obvious yet hidden, deadly, and so very part of my human flesh.
I know Jesus lived his life free of sin, took each of ours into his back and walked into his death to pay our God our debt.
And then we were free.
So if I know that…
Why does it still hurt so much to see sin?
Why am I surprised to learn about how far our world has fallen from what God intended for us in the Garden of Eden?
Like when I see a young Cambodian girl on the arm of an older white man at midnight
Or to realize why my class of 5th grade ESL students is mostly made up of boys.
Where are the girls? Where are my students?
This country has a living memory of genocide.
A memory of blood literally running through the streets.
They know how to stretch food because they didn’t always have it, and still don’t.
They burn trash and throw it in rivers because they don’t have the luxury of time to worry about the long-term health of our planet. You have to put the oxygen mask on yourself before you can put it on your neighbor. Sometimes it feels like nobody gave Cambodia an oxygen mask in the first place.
But I know God is good. So how can this be?
How can God still be good when sex tourism exists?
How can God be good when sin seems so entrenched in His creation that it feels as if He has forgotten about us?
I don’t have a perfect answer for this question. God is huge. His plan is big. His plan is often incomprehensible to me. But I trust that He knows what He’s doing.
I started to read the book of Judges today. I’ve been working my way through the Old Testament since I left in my trip. If nothing else, the Old Testament has taught me two things. God is always faithful to His word and we are not faithful to Him. God makes a promise, things get hard, his people forget that God doesn’t make false promises, God gives them over to their desires. Then eventually they realize they made a mistake, God hears their cries and steps in to save them. Repeat. That’s a pretty accurate description of how I operate as well, even though I everyday I’m blessed with the ability to read about how it went for the Israelites.
In Judges 2:12 it says “And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt.” (Brought them out of Egypt as in rescued them from slavery). But is does NOT say “And the Lord abandoned his people.” God gets angry that we abandoned him but he didn’t abandon us first. And he doesn’t even abandon us! Even though he has every right to do so. Verse 14 says “So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he gave them over to plunderers who plundered them.”
THEN in verse 16 God does something only God would do. He rescues them again. “Then the Lord raised up judges, who saved them out of the hands of those who plundered them.” In verse 18 it says he saves them because their groans and afflictions moved him to pity. And then of course His people don’t listen and the cycle repeats. But God listens and He hears His unfaithful people as they cry and suffer. Which again is incomprehensible to me, a person who gets offended when a friend asks if we can change the time we had decided on to get coffee.
I know my God hears my cries and the cries of those who suffer in Cambodia. I know my God is faithful. I know my God loves this nation more than I do.
I know my Jesus had every right to question God’s goodness as he was scoffed and mocked and beaten and murdered. He lived a life free of sin and walked into his death for the very same people who nailed him to a cross.
And he asked the father to forgive them as he hung there. “For they know not what they do.”
Like the disciples, if I had been living and following Jesus when he was alive I wouldn’t have wanted him to die. That would be the worst possible thing to happen to my king, right??? But God’s plan is beyond what we can make sense of. He took the ultimate atrocity and evil committed against his own son and turned it into the best thing that has ever happened to this world. Our freedom from
sin. The ability to come back to him and live with him for eternity. He turned the humiliating death of his son into the gift of salvation for his adopted sons and daughters.
And that is what God told me today when I questioned his goodness for the 1000th time. I can’t see his goodness when I see the pervasiveness of sex trafficking here, or when I have to avoid walking through a field for risk of walking over a land mine. I can trust that God sees and hears the cries of suffering and uses them to display his glory and bring good to us.
Dang. I’m praying for God to continue to teach me about how good he is. For me to thank him when I can see the good and trust him when I don’t (which is so pften). I pray for his goodness to radiate over this nation and these people. For the smallness of our service to this nation to point to and reflect the goodness of our dad.
