“Lord,
if you had been here, my brother [and my sister] would not have died.”
John 11: 32
I had
prayed for James Foley, the American journalist who had been abducted by ISIS
in Syria. And for Kayla Mueller, the American human rights worker who had been
volunteering in Syria with Doctors Without Borders. When I heard the news that they
had been killed, I felt like my own brother and sister had died. “Lord,
if you had been here . . .” Why does our all powerful and all loving God
permit such evil to exist?
God gives
us free will to choose goodness over darkness. Some choose the darkness and as
a result bad things — evil things — happen. The consequences of those choices
create a nightmare for us. But in God’s reality they represent only a microsecond
in time compared to the eternity that awaits us.
Look at Sunday’s
Gospel: Lazarus lay dead in a tomb for four days. His sisters cannot understand
how their best friend Jesus, the miracle worker, could have let it happen. In
the end Jesus brings Lazarus back to life and those four days of sorrow become
a distant, faded memory compared to the joy of being reunited.
And that is
how it will be for us. The pain felt by Martha and Mary is like the pain we
experience in dealing with the presence of evil in our world. But in God’s eye
it is temporary — like the four days that Lazarus lay dead in the tomb. There
is so very much more that God has waiting for us.
The cross,
the symbol of our faith, is God’s answer to the problem of evil. In the center
of the cross, in the center of the pain and the suffering, we find God in human
form. The message of the cross is hope. It tells us that we are not alone, that
God is with us in the pain and the suffering; and someday it will all make
sense, there will be a resurrection.
And all the
people we have lost in our lives, perhaps our parents, perhaps our children;
all those who have been dear to us; and all the James Foleys and Kayla Muellers
will share with us in the joy of God’s presence for all eternity.
In the face of the evil we are confronted with each day, let us be
at peace in the knowledge that God is always with us, holding our hand, leading
us to a place where there will be no more pain, no more suffering and no more darkness.
5th
Sunday of Lent, Cycle A
………………………………………………………………………………..
Readers
of this blog might enjoy these books by Deacon Lex. Both are available on
Amazon.com:
Just to Follow My Friend: Experiencing God’s Presence in Everyday
Life
Synchronicity as the Work of the Holy Spirit: Jungian Insights for
Spiritual Direction and Pastoral Ministry
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