April 20th, 2007
Fair?
“You are entirely faithful.”
Psalm 89:8b
One of the things I enjoy about being the Nursery School Director is the Bible Story I get to tell at “Circle Time”. Each day there are 18 3-4 year olds who listen in rapt attention as I tell them a story about how God worked in history. Today’s story, how Jesus raised Jairus’s daughter from the dead (Mark 5), began well enough. They were still as I told of Jairus coming to ask Jesus to come to his house to heal his sick daughter. Their faces showed sadness and concern as I related how the servants came to report that the girl had died. Then their eyes widened in excitement as they learned that Jesus told the girl to “get up”. The “moral of the story’? Jesus is powerful. Jesus can even tell someone who is dead to be alive again! It was great to see the hope and love they had as they thought about Jesus being able to perform such an awesome thing. Then I stopped myself.
Next week one of the students goes to Boston for open heart surgery for a tumor. Last week one girl’s baby brother was born prematurely, has undergone surgery and has been on a respirator. Another little girl’s parents are undergoing a divorce. So, I stopped myself. I couldn’t just sit there and exclaim how awesome God is, how He loves us so much that he promises to take care of us. Those answers don’t work for a 3-4 year old who is undergoing something tragic. So, with the excitement still lingering in their eyes, I finished, “Jesus loves us very much; He can use his power to help us too, but he doesn’t always heal everyone.” VERY LAME!! And yet, in all honesty, I have no answers for the pain that we go through.
I firmly believe that God is powerful. I know that He is total love. Psalm 89 goes on to say, “Powerful is your arm! Strong is your hand!” (vs. 13). However, I also know that there is seemingly unbearable sorrow in people’s lives. How do I balance that? Perhaps life is not all about us. Perhaps God, in his infinite wisdom, will allow suffering in my life so He can show his power in someone else’s.
At a Praise Team practice last week we discussed how God allowed 400 years of slavery – 400 years worth of people being born slaves, working as slaves, dying as slaves – so that at the end of 400 years he could show how awesomely powerful he really is. Fair to the 400 years of slaves? No. Perhaps God’s scale of “fairness” is different than ours. So again, I have no answers to give to the suffering except that perhaps, 400 years from now, our suffering will display God’s glory. How do you explain that to a 4 year old?