My husband and I took a quick walk on the beach this morning. The weather was lovely. A warm day slipped in between two cold days. Because it was a public holiday and a long weekend, there were lots of people on the beach. Families with children, young people in bathing suits, a mother playing cricket with her young son, and older people watching grandchildren. A lovely scene. I wonder if God purposely makes days like this for us to enjoy? There’s a question that if tree falls in the forest, and there’s no one to hear it fall, does it make a sound? There are so many mysteries with God. There are so many mysteries about life.
One of the questions most often asked is, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” and I think there are as many theories about that as there are people asking the question. Whenever we do something, anything, there is a consequence. So a lot of the time, when bad things happen, they are as a consequence of a bad choice we made even though we don’t always like to admit it. Other times there are things like people getting sick and dying. There are natural disasters which claims hundreds of lives and there aren’t any logical explanations to them. They happen. I haven’t found the words, ‘logic’ or ‘logical’ in the Bible. My husband always tells me to think logically and I normally just give up at that point, because it obviously isn’t my strong point.
Look at something like the time when God spoke to Moses out of the burning bush? That didn’t exactly make sense and there wasn’t a logical explanation. Apparently you do get bushes in the dessert that catch alight, but they don’t continue burning, they quickly burn out. And they don’t talk. Then there was the Red Sea that parted. The water that came out of the rock. The Jordan River that was in flood and also parted for the Israelites to walk through. What about the wall of Jericho that fell down? Any logic in that? In 2 Chronicles 20, Jehoshaphat and his army watched as the enemy forces annihilated each other and all they had to do was gather the spoils. What about Noah who built an enormous boat, nowhere near the ocean? Why? Because God said so. Jonah was swallowed by a fish.
King Hezekiah asked God to let the shadow on the sundial of Ahaz go back 10 degrees and it happened. In other words the earth rotated back on its axis. Logical? David did all kinds of bad things. He even committed adultery and had a man killed. Yet God called him a man after his own heart? I understand why? David loved God but he was a human being like you and me and he did all kinds of things he shouldn’t have, just like you and me. Each time he did something bad, he repented and sought forgiveness from God. Also, as far as I can see he didn’t do the same sin twice. To me it makes sense, but I’m no really known for logical thinking. Would it make sense to someone who doesn’t know God that well? God make Hosea marry a prostitute and have children with her, and go and bring her back home every time she wandered off, in order to illustrate Israel’s unfaithfulness. Logical? Would we be willing to do something like that?
Daniel was carried away in captivity and quite possibly castrated. Yet he remained ever faithful to God. In Habakkuk 3:17 – 18, “Though the fig tree may not blossom, Not fruit be on the vines; Though the labor of the of the olive may fail, And the fields yield no food; Though the flock be cut off from the fold, And there be no herd in the stalls – Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.
These are things that don’t make any sense, and aren’t at all logical. But then, faith doesn’t make sense and isn’t at all logical. Believing in things that you can’t see, speaking things that are not as if they are, and having someone die for you are not things that our small minds can fathom. But then, if faith was logical and easy what would the point be?
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