J. Grant Swank, Jr.
So many dead. So many grieving. So many distraught.
Where is God? Where is the good God?
Good
God created all things sound and pure. Then He placed our first parents
in paradise — the Garden of Eden. There, however, was a stipulation.
They dared not touch a particular tree. That obviously was to test the
mortals-with-free-will obedience quotient.
All other creatures on Earth were programmed by instinct. Only Adam and Eve
were gifted with free will — the awesome power of choice. In that, at
least, was their image of deity upon their very own natures — the power
to think, to make decisions.
Yet, sadly, our first parents
disobeyed God to follow the Lie. The Lie told them God really didn’t
mean what He said. It was all a ruse. Good God would overlook their
eating of the forbidden fruit. After all, He is
good God.
However,
good God is not only mercy but also justice — eternally so. If He were
not, none of us would want to know Him let alone worship and obey Him.
In
His mercy and justice, God dealt with Adam and Eve’s disobedience. In
His mercy, He did not slay them. He permitted them life and forgiving
grace — but a temporary span on Earth, not the eternity He had
originally planned. In His justice, He disciplined them by casting them
out of Eden. Further, Eve would give birth in pain. Adam would dig out
a living by the sweat of his brow.
Earth fell when our first
parents disobeyed God. In that, mortal’s body and soul fell, hence
there being sickness followed by death as well as meanness, madness and
murder, anger, animosity and anxiety.
Further, when Earth fell
due to Adam and Eve falling for the Lie, the globe itself came upon its
own calamities. They were not originally intended by good God. They
were the result of mortals’ disobedience, hence floods, hurricanes,
tornadoes, fires and, yes, earthquakes.
Earth’s
calamities should then remind us that mortals are indeed frail, fragile
creatures in need of the Power above and beyond themselves. Mortals are temporary creatures of a spiritually fallen planet. Mortals are in need of a merciful, comforting God.
Therefore,
when earthquakes take lives, spring forth wails of woe, and cover the
planet with depression, they remind us of history’s beginnings. They
remind us of the awful state the planet is in due to mortal going his
and her own way apart from good God. They remind us to call out for
mercy, for divine help, and for a hope that is beyond and above the
earthquakes, winds and fire.
An earthquake is not God’s fault.
It is mortals’ fault — from the start, that is. Adam and Eve’s lineage
have had to deal with their disobedience ever since they went for the
Lie. That should surely underline for all thinking mortals how truly
crucial it is to obey an Almighty God, falling at His feet for mercy
and grace, beseeching Him to redeem Earth’s tragedies into a meaning
that only eternity can fully explain.
The
hope? The hope in a spiritually fallen world is still the good God.
There really is no other alternative other than despair and finally
spiritual and / or physical suicide. Hope comes from reaching out in
faith to good God, calling upon His everlasting arms, and finding Him
there — no matter the tragedy, the loss, and the perplexity.
In
that, good God has the last word for those in faith. In that, good God
then is their Almighty One placing His period at their last sentence.
God
Himself acted out before us how to deal with this spiritually fallen
planet. He came to earth in Jesus. He taught and loved and healed. Then
the jealous enemy spiked Him to the cross. Murder. Injustice. Madness.
Meanness. Cruelty.
Yet from that zenith of calamities came His resurrection.
And from those lips — now alive and loving — come the words: "I am the
resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me shall not die. Come
unto Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you
rest. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone will open, I will come
in to him and sup with him and he with Me."
Till the close of
Earth’s history, tragedies will continue to spill themselves over the
face of the planet — since Adam and Eve first fell for the Lie. But out
of every tragedy, faith can lift the arm of hope toward good God. In
doing so, victory is assured through the tears. Eternity will prove it
to be true.