Beneath my feet are remnants of a mass grave where hundreds lost their lives at the hand of evil people.
All around me are trees that were used as weapons of mass destruction to slaughter babies during the reign of The Khmer Rouge Regime.To my left there is a building stacked with skulls that have surfaced from floods, and a display case filled to the brim with assorted bones collected from flooding in the last few decades. Here I stand taking in the heaviness, looking up to the sky asking God where he was during all of this. How could a God of the universe let death and destruction happen this way?
In the past it was much easier to see how God wasn’t there in hardship. It was easier to assume that this God was a figure of power and conditional love that became disapproving of me when I sinned. It was easier for me to hold on to anger and resentment for the terrible things that happened to me, his ” child ” , and assume that he had abandoned me when I felt lost. It was easier to see God as a figure that did not want good for my life, because it allowed me to justify the pain.
Walking through land marked with such devastation I challenged God with a question:
“Okay God of the universe, What kind of “father” would allow this to happen?”
I looked down and I saw his response.
At my feet — a mass grave — there was a mother hen and her innocent little chicks walking around in the warm sun seeking nourishment from a land that was saturated in death and decay. Despite her pecking away at a land of such pain and destruction, she was able to provide life bearing food to her babies. This image of such contrasting elements helped me begin to understand the character of God.
Not only is my God a redeemer, but a God of protection and provision.
Even amidst toil and destruction, God is able to repurpose what has been destroyed to bring new life.
He is making all things new — beauty from ashes.
It is not God that does these things to us, nor is it Him that allows it to happen… Rather it is he who longs to rescue us from the fallen world that we live in. He longs to provide us nourishment and protection as he lovingly hovers over us and dwells within us.
