The Lord said to Job: “Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? Let him who accuses God answer him!…Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself? Do you have an arm like God’s and can your voice thunder like his?”

(Job 40.1&2,8&9)

Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.” And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion…..The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished…

(Ex 33.18&19; 34.6&7)

Watch out that no-one deceives you….You will hear of wars and rumours of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of the birth pains.. you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death because of me.. many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations

(Matt 24.4-14)

I am back on familiar ground, wrestling with the sheer scale of human suffering – today and in the past, and in the future as it seems to be unfolding before our very eyes. Wrestling with the tension between the revelation of God’s love and power and will to save as seen in Jesus, and the heartbreaking cry which is going up every hour of every day as people face pain, horror, oppression and death without hope.

The very doubts which arise in my mind make me feel guilty – adding to the messy and distressing nature of the fight. And yet, I think of Job who cried out in his agony and loss, and whom God commended for speaking truth about the Almighty – truth about God’s justice and holiness and absolute trustworthiness. And I think of Jesus, in very nature God and able to heal, resurrect and create new life, who nonetheless spoke to his disciples that they would ‘always have the poor with them’, and whose mission in his short life was not to tackle social justice, create an ideal state, overthrow the oppression of women, or heal every illness and deformity which could be found in the world in his time. 

If Jesus had a different, and greater, agenda, then is it not possible for me to try to grasp that other agenda too, to begin to see beyond this world and its very real troubles to the greater and more glorious reality beyond? Am I so embedded in the physical present that I cannot even begin to understand or imagine there might be something immeasurably better? May I not learn to trust that there is something worth hanging onto beyond the immediate and enveloping misery which clouds my vision of the world?

God tells us that his ways are higher than ours, and yet to our shame we continue to fall into the devil’s trap of sitting in judgement on the Divine, of weighing God’s plans and purposes by human values. Surely this must be one of the forms by which ‘wickedness’ has increased, so that so many in the world today are deceived into condemning God without really listening to the gospel and to the claims which Jesus made for himself. As CS Lewis put in the title of his book, we put ‘God in the dock’, and having found fault with the plans of the Almighty, decide he is untrustworthy, and not to be considered in any of our thinking about life and creation.

With shame, I confess it again, I really struggle with these great unanswered questions, these mysteries which surround God’s great plan of redemption. I pray, “Thy will be done..” and then am tempted to add a qualifier – “but not if anyone is going to get hurt by it…” 

Father God, I believe that you could end all human suffering and pain tomorrow, if it were your plan and purpose to do so; if by that means, all glory would go to your Son my Saviour. And so I pray, “thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven”. Help me, dear Father, to trust you for the prayers which seem unanswered, for the answers that involve ongoing mess and pain for billions around the world. And dear Father, forgive and cleanse me of this arrogance, this pride which keeps on rearing its head and demanding that you give account of yourself to me, for my approval. I am so ashamed to recognise this attitude in my heart. Thank you for the mercy which I have in Jesus, so that my sin is forgiven in his name. May my passion be for the proclamation of that mercy to all nations, so that he might be glorified, and your kingdom come on earth.