Day 23 Aleppo

Where is God?  Why is He allowing this to happen?  Why can He not intervene and stop the madness and destruction and wanton evil which is causing so much horrendous suffering?   Where is He for the mother who has seen her children buried under tonnes of rubble and the traumatised two year old clinging to the nurse in abject terror?   Where is He?    I dont think there is anyone on the planet who believes in God and has not asked this question - and is not asking it at the moment as the tragedy unfolds on our screens daily. Where are you God and why aren't you stopping this? I asked this

question about another tragic happening many years ago . I was really really angry with God and I wasn't going to let Him off with any of the pat answers we are so often handed by the church and nice people who are good at heart but who don't have an answer. I wanted a real answer. And I wanted it from God. I got it. After a while of shouting at Him and telling Him He wasn't doing a good enough job.

Sitting in my car at the traffic lights one day, as clear as anything I heard Him say - Caz, I take full responsibility. That was it. That was what He said. Nothing else.

I started to think about that. God takes full responsibility for everything which happens on this planet. It is His world and He knows every detail about what is going on in it. So if anyone is responsible, then I guess it is Him. What does it mean to ' take responsibility' ? I suppose it partly means to be able to give a full and satisfactory answer as to why. God knows everything. He knows every person in Aleppo, their circumstance and their history. He knows the person pulling the trigger and the one under the rubble. He knows all their possible futures too. He sees what is going to happen in Aleppo in ten, fifty, three hundred years time. He knows who needs to be there and why at every moment so that His plan can come to pass. And He also knows who He has destined to be in glory with Him for eternity. The children who have died in the past months have been rescued from that hell hole and are now with Him in heaven - I am absolutely sure of it. There will be many many more who we don't expect to be there who will will recognise when we join them there. Refugees and victims and the poor, marginalised and downtrodden. He went after them when He was on earth and He is still in the business of going after them now.

I found this quote about responsibility

God has already fully accepted the pain of the consequences of His actions. When He allows someone to die in a bombing raid - He has already died there first. This is pretty hard to get our head around and Im probably not explaining it very well. I hope the Holy Spirit will help you as you read this to understand what I understood in the days and weeks after God spoke to me all those years ago. He is only able to take responsibility for the suffering in the world because He has suffered. He knows. He has been through it and much more, taking upon Himself not only the sufferings of the whole world, but the sins as well. We have no idea what He went through on the cross to bring us into peace and relationship with God. But having been through that He can now look us straight in the eye and say ' I can justify my action and my inaction in every case' There are reasons. The reasons are to do with the much bigger picture as well as the eternal destiny of each individual. It is hard to grasp, but with all my heart I know this to be true. God IS good. And He is NOT passively sitting by watching the suffering in Aleppo. He is suffering with those who suffer, weeping with those who weep, grieving over the selfishness and corruption and murderous vanity of those who are fighting. He is appearing to those who are dying and reaching out to them in their last moments. He is giving strength to rescuers and medics and wisdom to the church which is still there. And He is not afraid to stand up and own it all.

I recently heard a sermon given by a pastor from Egypt. Horrendous things are happening in Egypt - especially to Christians. The pastor told us not to pray for an end to the persecution but to pray that the church might have strength and hope in the midst of it because Jesus was doing mighty and amazing things on a daily basis. The blood of the martyrs is a powerful thing. The testimony of the church is shocking and awesome to a society which believes in vengeance and punishment rather than forgiveness and grace. Miracles are happening everywhere all the time and thousands and thousands are coming into the kingdom. Yes, churches are being burned out and people are being murdered and living in abject terror for their lives. And yet they can still say - don't pray for this to stop, we can see what God is doing here. Awesome eh?

In the Old testament God said to Moses ( Ex 33;19) ' I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion ' In other words, God will not be constrained by our ways of thinking. He will be outrageously kind where He sees fit - in a gazillion places where we would not be kind. He will show mercy to those who don't deserve it and He will not intervene where we think He should. He is God. We know what He is like - He is like Jesus. And we love Jesus with all our hearts. So it is time to grow up and trust Him. And pray pray pray that His will be done in every soul in Aleppo, that His purposes are worked out, that His mercy brings all of those who are dying into His glory. His enemy is defeated but the death throes are ugly. Let us do our part in dismantling the works of darkness in every way we possibly can.