Why Do Bad Things Happen?

Last Saturday morning, at approximately 10:30am, a young woman drove into a crowd of bystanders watching the traditional Oklahoma State University Homecoming parade here in Stillwater.  The end result was 4 people dead and as many as 47 people injured, several critically.

I’m sure there are many people today asking themselves, “Why?”

As many of my close friends know, I too, have struggled with this question as it relates to my own life and the lives of others.  Only by coming to terms over time with something terribly sad in my life have I come to understand the role God plays when human tragedies occur.

I now believe that my God does not send bad things to punish us, or test us.  In fact, God does not send them at all.  Rather, I sense there are powerful forces loose in the world, forces like evil, disease and death.

So, what is God's role in all this turmoil?  If God is not sending the accidents, tragedies, the diseases, then why not step in and prevent them?

For me, this is the more difficult question.  The experience of the individual cries so clearly for divine intervention, for healing, for salvation from emotional or physical pain.  Although sometimes miraculous healings do occur, which confirm the presence of the Divine, in my experience there generally is not much physical intervention.

However, the "intercession" I have experienced has been as powerful as anything physical.  I have grown certain that God actually grieves for these horrible events with us; that God is as sad, even more so, about what is happening to me as I am.  God's role, I believe, is to be "by my side," to understand me, to comfort me, to "…lead me beside quiet waters, as He restores my soul" (Psalm 23) in the symbolic "valley of the shadow of death" which I face, as does every other person in the world.

Finally, and most importantly, God is always beside me, loves me, and wishes me to know love without limits and community without end.  And He wants to help me collect the broken pieces—help me become whole again.  As whole as I was intended and created to be from the beginning by this loving God.

Take some time this week to be in prayer for those struggling in the hospital, and for the families of those who have died.  

Would You Like to Have a Relationship With God?