Above painting: Pondering Scholar, Sir Martin Archer Shee, Irish, (1769–1850)
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We all could make a list of what we want God to do for us. Maybe you already have a list (you might even call it your ‘prayer list’). And that is good. It is what God says we should do. I Peter 5:7 says, “Cast all your anxieties on God because he cares for you.” So, have you been getting everything on your list? Why not?
If God is all-loving and also all-powerful, why doesn’t He do something about all the troubles in the world and in my own life? This has been one of the most troubling questions throughout history for the saints, theologians, philosophers, and just about everyone else.
Philip Yancey wrote a book entitled “Disappointment With God.” The dedication page says, “For my brother, who is still disappointed.” There are many people like this brother. I am sure that we all, at one time or another, perhaps even much of the time, have been disappointed with God. In another book, Yancey wrote this profound sentence: “Most of my struggles in the Christian life circle around the same two themes: why God doesn’t act the way I want God to act, and why I don’t act the way God wants me to act.”
We have all struggled with the problem of unanswered prayer. Perhaps you prayed to win the lottery and your numbers did not match– again. Well, no big deal you decide, everybody who prays for 1.2 billion dollars can’t win it, so you realize it was a dumb prayer. But there are so many other prayers that would seem to be in the best interests of everyone involved, including God. You pray for that young father with the three little kids to survive his critical injuries from a car accident, but God lets him die; and at his funeral, you are indeed disappointed with God. It should have been so simple for Him. Those kids needed their dad, and their mother needed her husband. God could have done something, but He did not.
This is Holy Week, and this week we see God ‘doing something.’ Here, in this story, God is doing His most important work in all history– but we may remain unmoved by it. In our limited vision, we may be disappointed in this, too. We want a God who will do what we want him to do— make me well, improve the economy, bring peace into the world and into my life, make my business succeed, keep me healthy, make the tornado miss my house, help my loved one to quit drinking, help me get that job, or whatever it is on your life. That’s all we want.
But then we read the Gospels and it looks like all God wants to do is come to earth in the person of Jesus Christ, die on the cross for the forgiveness of my sins, rise from the dead so that I too can live again, and be with God forever in His perfect heavenly home, where there will be no more sorrow or pain or trouble of any kind.
And we say, “That’s all nice, God, but it’s not what I need right now.” You may not say it just that way, but that kind of attitude is behind many of our questions about what God is doing and not doing in our world.
Yet the Bible focuses our attention this Holy Weekend to God’s most important miracle for us. The Bible tells us that it is in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that we find the answers to all our questions, and the place where all our deepest needs are met, now and in eternity.
Our problem is not that God has failed to act. The problem is that God does not do what I want him to do; and, that I do not even know what I need most of all. Faith, however, believes that what God has done in Christ is, in the long run, of greatest value.
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So, what has God ever done for me?… Other than give me a life, over 25,000 days already, a wonderful world to live in, two good eyes to see my way around, a home, a healthy body that is still working after all these years (for the most part), family and friends to love and cherish, a free will to do what is right; not to mention that God sent His son Jesus to show me how life is best lived, to die for the forgiveness of my sins, to rise from the dead so that I may also not stay dead, and then promise me an eternal life in his perfect home where all will be made right again…
Other than that, what has God ever done for me?
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John 3:16 — For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Mark 5:19 — (Jesus said), “Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.”
Psalm 66:16 — Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has done for my soul.
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TO GOD BE THE GLORY GREAT THINGS HE HAS DONE!
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