Shekinah

Nowadays everywhere we turn, we seem to hear a lot of bad news and it’s not just confined to our part of the world – Man tries to blow up a plane; suicide bomber blows detonates bomb killing him/herself and 10 others, mudslides destroy homes, gangs take out informer. We seem to have become immune to all this, it’s part of life in these dangerous times, we say. Life doesn’t seem to have much value anymore. Our hearts are burdened just a wee bit but soon the sports, video games and friends drown out those compassionate hearts. Then along comes a big one like the earthquake in Haiti. It shakes us just looking at the massive destruction. The scenes we see take our breath away -wailing people mourning their dead, little orphans standing naked on the streets too bewildered to understand what happened, people hopefully waiting for word of their loved ones.

The world reacts, money and supplies start pouring in. People galvanize to go onsite to help in the relief efforts or work at home to put together care packages for the survivors or send donations of money. So many people donate blood; young kids in school bring in their pennies to send out a donation to an organization of their choice and make cards to comfort the stricken. We start to see the “good” side of people.

In the midst of all this we wonder why this happened. Many theories are put out – it is a punishment from God, it is an act of nature, it is part of the end of the world etc. We do not know, we cannot judge. These are way beyond our understanding, so it is better to stay away from assumptions.  The Bible gives us this wonderful verse in Proverbs 3:5 – “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding”. God, the Creator

of the universe knows all and sees all, He allows many things to happen for reasons we do not comprehend. The best thing for us to do in these confusing situations is to just turn over all our doubts to the Lord and trust in Him whole-heartedly. It is not our job to debate why, but to reach a helping, comforting hand to those in need.

We will not face such major catastrophes everyday this year, but we will face many situations where we do not understand why such a bad thing happened through no fault of ours. Remember, we do not need to question why, we just need to trust in the Lord Jesus that He will work out everything for our good, according to His will. Use every incident as a means of increasing your faith in the unchanging God who loves you so much that  He did not hesitate to sacrifice His Son  Jesus Christ for you!

Let us never question the character of God—He is always a God of mercy, love and justice.