Pieces in Place

The more I dig into my newly renewed faith the more questions I have. I'm sure this is true of many people new to their faith, but as analytical as I am, it causes problems. Problems like not sleeping at night as I turn something over and around in my head. This time however, it came to me when I was awake.

Recently, I have become aware of the suffering of those around me. Many people close to me suffer a great deal in their lives. People who always put others before themselves, who love others as much if not more than themselves, yet they suffer day in and day out. As new as I am to my faith I panicked. Why am I following a God that would allow this? Why would he allow it? Why do the righteous suffer while the fallen are exalted? These questions caused me great distress.

I loved these people and didn't wanna see them suffer. I asked why they suffer when they are so good. I begged God to take their pain away. If he couldn't take it away I begged him to put it on me. I begged for them to be taken off their crosses and to put me up in their place. To take away all of their pain. Or at least to make me understand why they suffer. And that's when after beating myself down all day, I stopped to listen. And God made me understand, in a flash of thoughts.

In the beginning God capped off creation by creating man and woman. In his likeness and image they were created. They were exactly as he wanted. Then we know what happend. Using their free will they unleashed evil into the world. The evil became a part of human nature as evidenced by their children Cain and Abel. The first recorded murder in the bible. Cain and Abel were made in the image and likeness of Adam and Eve, and so on and so forth, generation to generation.

From the moment they are expelled from the Garden of Eden until the flood and the Noahic Covenant God was very sparse in his dealings with man. As I said evil was part of man's nature. And as man multiplied, so too did his evil. Until God could take no more and sent the flood to destroy the evil.

After the flood we begin to see God taking an active part in his story. He must have realized that to avoid what happened before the flood he would have to work as a check against the evil unleashed on the world, through the use of our free will. Now we see him talking to Abraham and Moses, wrestling with Jacob, and punishing Egypt, to cite a few examples.

Generation after generation we grow further and further from what God wanted us to be. So he uses life experiences he places before us to shape us back to who he meant us to be. He doesn't force us through them, but puts the choice before us, knowing our character and the likely choice we will make.

Like a scupltor with a kinfe, he works us like clay until we reach the point where he wants us. This is the pain and suffering people feel as they go through life. And just like working with clay, sometimes it takes more, sometimes it takes less, and sometimes you scrap it and start over.