It's Not Random...But It's Not Coherent Either

There are plenty of events that cannot be explained logically.  We can go through the Bible and try to give some sort of rationale to all too many of them and we will find ourselves dumbfounded.  Paul suffered and we might say it was for his development spiritually but was he really that far bent out of shape to require all the hardships and painful trials he endured?  There is a great battle going on unseen within the universe and it is unfathomable to us its reach.  We can talk about the Civil War or World War II in general ways and feel like everything was quite reasonable but when you track the events of a single life going through it, the wars are irrational and incoherent.  Strategies are all well and good and the leaders directing armies make sense of what they are doing but for the poor soul on the battlefield, there is nothing sensible in it.  We are in the midst of a great and terrible conflict and although we are not aware of the forces operating all about us, we don't have to look far to see the collateral damage.  Anger, bitterness, frustration, broken hearts, lost dreams, shattered hopes are not far from any of us and it all seems like nonsense if we don't factor into the life equation the unseen battleground.   The devil and his forces are waging war against humanity and it is terribly brutal what is coming of this war.  Yet our Savior has promised to bind up the brokenhearted and release from darkness all those prisoners who have experienced the fury of the battlefield.  If it was all God in this, we might be able to draw a straight line of cause and effect but the devil is out there too and he is not reasonable in his workings.  Good people get blasted and terrible ones seem to have "all the luck".  Smart plans get beaten into the ground by circumstances we can't factor into our organizing.  Blessings seem to come in haphazard ways and the prayer of Jabez is a great model for good Christian people until the tent stakes are ripped out of the ground by a hurricane and what is left from the storm is rubble.  We have a Savior though who took the worst the devil could throw at Him and on the third day rose from the dead and one day the devil will be thrown into the lake of fire and the battlefield will become a paradise.  Until then, we trust in a good God who loves us and suffers with us in the "aches" of life.    Faith in our Lord's love for us is not a platitude; it is the way we have it and His love for us will triumph in the end.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.  Therefore put on the full armor of God...      Ephesians 6:12-13a NIV