By David ReayTuesday 3 Feb 2015LifeWords DevotionalsFaithReading Time: 0 minutes
Transcript:
Read Jeremiah 12:1-2
1 You are always righteous,Lord,
when I bring a case before you.
Yet I would speak with you about your justice:
Why does the way of the wicked prosper?
Why do all the faithless live at ease?
2 You have planted them,and they have taken root;
they grow and bear fruit.
You are always on their lips
but far from their hearts. (NIV)
Many of us find ourselves sharing Jeremiah’s sentiments. We believe God is fair and just but there doesn’t seem much fairness and justice in his world. This can,in fact,lead to our concluding God is not fair or just-something Jeremiah does not do.
The contrast between the fairness of God and the unfairness of life raises the deep issue of God’s providence,his ordering of the affairs of the world. Some want to imagine God as micromanaging his world,ordaining all that happens in it. This causes real problems because it leads to our believing God is ordaining evil,inflicting cancer and car accidents on people who don’t deserve them.
God’s ‘control’ is not quite like that. He does allow the wicked to prosper and those who love him to suffer unjustly. Yet this is part of his granting freedom for humans to be humans in a disordered world. In other words,God is well aware of the mess and the injustice but is not acting to clean it up entirely till Jesus returns to put things right.
Life and the world might be unfair. But God is not unfair. Not all that happens in our world is planned by him let alone approved by him. We wish things were different but they are not. Until the day that fairness and justice are universally established by Jesus,we cling to the fairness and justice of God even as we live amongst painful unfairness and obvious injustice.
Blessings
David Reay