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As I sit in my office writing this, it continues to drizzle outside, on to ground that cannot absorb any more water. It is so wet that even the worms can't stay at home. As I think about this overabundance of water, I can't help but think that my recent articles suit the situation: if God is a God of love, why is it raining so much that many of the farmers will not even be able to put in a crop this year?
Does God care that it is raining too much? Does He care that hailstones and tornadoes have recently killed many people and created enormous financial burdens for those afflicted? Does He care when the earth shakes and multitudes are buried in the rubble? Does He care when demented wackos take their rage out on people who have no responsibility for that rage? Is God a loving God?
Without answering that question, let me ask a more pertinent one: why should God care? How many of the farmers, whose livelihoods are threatened by too much of a good thing, have used their previously received crops and profits to love and serve God above all? The vast majority have used God's fertile earth, His beneficent sun, and His thirst-quenching rain, to harvest and market crops so they could spend what they made on their own pleasures--not even considering that God has a prior claim on all of their profits. So why should He care if they suddenly run into too much mud and too little sunshine? Why should He care if they go into bankruptcy?
How many of the victims of the multitude of weather and geological disasters that are raining down on us on a weekly basis have responded to the earlier grace of God and turned their lives over to Him to direct and control? If people are going to take the benefits when they come and then live as though they deserved them, why should God care if the nature He controls pounds them into senselessness?
How many of the victims of the manic rage of the increasing number of wackos are people whose lives were making enough of an impact for the Kingdom of God that the Kingdom will actually miss their input? Most of them have been going about their self-satisfied lives doing what they want to as though God didn't exist. In fact, many of them refuse to believe that He does. Since God sent His Son to die for them; and since they have metaphorically spit in His face by rejecting that act; why should God care if some lunatic blows them off the face of His earth?
We are a strange race. We joy and rejoice when the goodies are all coming our way, but we don't use them soberly and righteously, and well. So, why should God care if the goodies suddenly turn into curses?
Now, if you are still with me, let me say this: I don't know a single good reason why God should care. But I know He does. He doesn't make sense to me. If any one of us were God, we wouldn't put up with what we do. But He does.
Why?
Because, for some strange reason, He still cares.