There are lots of ways to ask the question.
Why do bad things happen to good people?
Why do Christians suffer?
Why does God not seem to answer prayer?
Why am I going through this?
Is God still with me?
The answer, which is never going to be complete in this life, boils down to one phrase: life in the in-between.
Philip Logan’s journey led Elaine and I this past week to a hospital room in North Shields, an English town between Newcastle and the North Sea coast.
His story began here:
“On the morning of the 20th of November 2011, I begrudgingly accepted an invitation to go to church. I was 27 years old, with wild dreadlocked hair and filled with anger. I walked into the meeting, which was held in a dated hotel function room in Newcastle, England. That day, the Holy Spirit took hold of me, and I walked to the altar trembling from the power that seemed to be surging through my body..."
Back in 2010, work began on a massive recreation centre in our small city of Owen Sound. Everything was on target until the contractors hit a layer of quicksand.
Work was delayed for the better part of a year while engineers constructed concrete platforms which would carry the weight of the building given the presence of the quicksand. Needless to say, millions of dollars were added to the project’s cost.
If the work had not been done, nothing would have happened for a while. But at some point, the whole thing would have started to tilt or sink.
Change comes to all of us, whether we like it or not. Personally, I’ve never liked change a whole lot. I get settled in a routine and it’s hard to get me out of it.
God thinks differently, of course, than we do, on this subject as on everything else. He continually uses the pressure of circumstances to force change on us.
Next weekend, we move out of the house we have lived in for nineteen years and the community we have lived in for thirty-four years, in fact for our entire married life. We move out of a relatively secure job I have held all that time and into a who -knows-what-will-happen self-employment role.
“Thanks for being a sojourner with me in this messed up life we live.” A young friend of mine sent me this message the other day.
His battle was my battle, and it’s your battle too. In a word, the battle is forgiveness.
He had suffered a very real and awful wrong. The perpetrator, a trusted friend, had shown no remorse.
