Newspaper - Thoughts for Sunday 2 Feb. 2022

18/02/22 12:20

From Randall Smelser
Preacher of the Christusgemeinde Peine-Stederdorf

How can a loving God allow such a thing?

A three-year-old in a car seat is not always happy. Recently I drove to Berlin with my grand-daughter. At the start everything was great but then she wanted out of her car seat. I could have explained all the laws and security rules but it would not have helped. She wanted what she WANTED – no matter what. I was the evil grandfather because my NO was unyielding. From her viewpoint it was cruelty to a child, inhuman, wrongful deprivation of personal liberty. I was cramping the free self-development of her personality and ignoring her rights as a child. How can a loving grandfather do that?! From my viewpoint I only wanted to bring her safely to our destination, follow the laws, be reasonable – in fact doing everything for her best interests.

Don’t we do that quite often too? We say: How can a loving God allow something, or forbid something, or not do anything, etc.? We know exactly what we want. And when God doesn’t go along with it, He is evil and we don’t believe in Him anymore. Often we stand there like a three-year-old, with our arms crossed and stamp our foot and scream: But I want to!

In Psalm 119 a king said: “God, You are good, and what You do is good: teach me Your decrees” (NIV). We presume to know everything, understand everything, and always have the right to self-determination. Could it be, though, that our understanding of life is like a 3-year-old in a child seat. Sometimes it is good to have a God who tells us how to live – even if we do not want to hear it.