I Don't Know What to Say

Those of you that know me, know that there are very few times in life that I can't find anything to say!  I find myself though exactly at that place.  I really don't know what is going on in the world.  I jokingly told everyone on Sunday that I knew in my heart that Mr. Camping was wrong, but had hoped he was right.  Sometimes true honestly is spoken in jest.  Maybe that is exactly what I was longing for, especially after seeing what happened in Joplin MO on Sunday night. 

I guess it is just because I have been to Joplin so many times in the 1980's and 1990's when I was a youth pastor and I stayed in motels on Rangeline that are gone now.  I ate in restraunts that are gone now.  I just spent some time on Ozark Christian College's Facebook page and though the campus wasn't effected structurally, it will never be the same.  Homes of employees totally destroyed, family and friends missing, and to date one student known dead in an off campus apartment.

Last Facebook post of Natalia Puebla, the OCC student who died in the tornado: "No guilt in life, no fear of death-this is the power of Christ in me.From life's first cry til final breath, Jesus commands my destiny. No power of hell, no scheme of man, could ever pluck me from His hand. Til He returns or calls me home, here in the power of Christ I live."  What gives a seventeen year old girl the courage to write that moments before Jesus welcomes her home?

I watched a YouTube video from my friend Kyle Idleman, who grew up in Joplin when his dad was president of OCC.  He is in Joplin helping and posted and incredible video of a church that was completely destroyed except for the cross, which was still standing.  Another picture of the Bendville Christian Church shows everything in a pile except for the back wall with the baptistry and the cross still standing.

I don't know what to say, but this is what I know, GOD DID NOT CAUSE THIS!!!!  He can and will work through this but he did not cause this.  If God allows me to this Sunday I will preach on the myth, urban legend, false teaching or whatever you want to call it when people say "everything happens for a reason". As if God is somehow behind this throwing tornados from the sky, tsunamis from the ocean as a punishment of some sort or even as a way to get even with a broken world. The world is broken that is why things aren't always the way we wish they were. God wanted us to live in total peace.  In a world void of tornados, tsunamis, floods, earthquakes, divorce, cancer, heart disease and broken families.  That all changed in Genesis 3!  Ever since that time God has been doing everything he can to help us make good choices even in difficult times, but he is not causing these things to happen.  He didn't cause them for a reason.  He can and will work things out for good for those who love Him and are following His call on them, but he is not causing tornadoes and other devastation.  He works in the midst of the devastation, but he doesn't cause the devastation or find any level of joy in the devastation.  But there is one who does ...

When the devastating events of this life, that were brought on as sin entered the world, happen there is one that takes great joy.  He doesn't cause individual events, but the sin that he ushered into the world set a path of devastation into the world that is the result of or the consequences of a broken fallen world.  Killer tornadoes and tsunamis and cancer and divorce are not part of God's plan, they come straight from the pits of hell from the moment that Satan ushered sin into the world.

I don't get it, I don't know what to say.  I am hurt, I am mad, but most of all I am confused.   Faith doesn't fix everything and everything doesn't happen for a reason.  But in the midst of my confusion I CHOOSE to hang on to these simple truths, GOD IS GOD AND I AM NOT, HE IS STILL ON THE THRONE AND HE LOVES ME WHEN NOT EVEN I UNDERSTAND WHY ... and that leaves me speechless ...