The Boston Bombings

(Note: This was written as a devotional for our prayer night at the church the day after the bombings at the Boston Marathon)

 

After an incident like yesterday’s bombing in Boston we are forced to ask, “How could a good and loving God allow such things?” and “Why do bad things happen to good people?”  How could God allow a little eight year old boy to be blown to bits.  How could a beautiful 29-year old woman from Medford be killed.  How could God let over a hundred people suffer injury, some of them changed for life, like the two brothers who each lost a leg? 

I do not want to sugar coat this or offer platitudes.  Pat answers and theological niceties are not what we are looking for at a time like this.  If all we have is some lukewarm answer then Christianity is not worth the effort.  On Sunday I will address this further, but I want you to know now that God does have a plan and He is in control.  He says in Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”  He has given us a beautiful gift, but one that has a sharp edge, and that is the gift of free will.  Some people use their free will to help others and to love people.  Some use it to strike out and hurt people.  God’s desire is that we would choose love, that we would choose light.  But simply having the ability to choose means that some will choose hate and darkness.  This is the human condition. 

God however, offers us two more gifts.  The first is that He promises to walk through the valleys of life with us.  “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.”   (Ps 23:4)  He will never leave us or forsake us.  He will weep with us, as His son Jesus Christ wept with Mary and Martha.  But He has the power to change things, and this is where we hold our ultimate hope. 

His third gift is found in Romans 8:28, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God”.  God can change things.  He can use them, no matter how bad things seem to be, He can use them.  This is His ultimate gift to us. I am not going to lie to you, sometimes I look at events in life and I wonder how God could ever bring anything good out of those things.   Sometimes it might be a long time before we can see anything good.  Sometimes it comes in very unexpected ways.  But I have seen it with my own eyes…I know it happens.  So when life throws me a curve ball I can confidently expect that somehow, some way, God is going to bring good out of it.

It is not wrong to ask God “why”.  It is not wrong even to yell and scream at God.  He has big shoulders; He can take it.  And He WILL answer.  That is all part of prayer.  That is why we come here tonight, to tell God we don’t understand what has happened, to ask ‘why’, maybe even to be frustrated with it all.  But in doing so, we know He will answer.  And in the asking, and in the answering, it will all be changed and given significance.   

 

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