Our God Reigns

Yes, Our God Reigns. 

I know it, but its hard to remember that on Monday morning. When a 14 year old is asking me about condoms and a 33 year old is crying because I just told her she has chlamydia (and unbeknownst to her, I treated her boyfriend for the same last week...). Or the chronic pain patient who just can't get enough oxycodone and is undoubtedly treating more than physical pain, just wanting the pills to make all the other pains go away too. I see this pain and I want to scream, "God, do you really reign? Are you really in control?" People are hurting every day; they've been abandoned, manipulated and they are struggling to pick up the pieces of their lives and lack the skills to do so. So they come see me. And this is where my role is best served, not as a physician, but as a believer, a fellow struggler, parent, daughter, sister...an average sinner.

These struggles, this hardship I see on the faces of so many everyday brings to mind a Bible study we did five years ago when a friend posed a question: why did Jesus have to die on the cross? If God is all powerful, couldn't he have washed our sins away without His Son having to DIE? In such PAIN? Our friend seemed especially perplexed and appeared to doubt God's strength and power because of it.

I was kind of annoyed. I knew our care group leaders could answer this question beautifully without blinking an eye--that's how brilliant and gifted this couple was. But they NEVER offered this explanation--the answer that I now know to be true.  I'm usually a roll-with-it type of gal so I was just rollin' with it. It happened the way it happened just because it did and there's no use asking questions, right? But he continued to question. And I became even more annoyed by his doubt. Each week, in an effort to get him to move on, I offered up some completely inadequate explanation. In the meantime, our group leaders asked questions right along with him, prayed with him, explored parallel ideas, wrestled with him. Over the years, I've continued to grow in my walk and know I still have so far to go but it wasn't until recently that I realized our friend was a lot like Jacob.

Ann Voskamp, master storyteller, relates in her amazing book One Thousand Gifts how she tells her son about Jacob's own wrestle with God-not letting go until God shows his face. These days I'm nearer to God and still too far away and I wrestle with Him, too.

Yes, God, You reign.

But why do you allow so many of your children to suffer?

Why do millions go without water to drink?

Why do children starve to death every day?

Why are children orphaned every day when AIDs rips their parents away--knowing that anti-virals could save their lives--yet such a simple solution is too expensive?

Why are children all over the lowcountry living in homes with drugs and guns and addiction and violence?

Why do lost people walk out of my office everyday with a prescription for medicine but without hearing the gospel? 

I don't know the answer to these questions, but I do know Jesus Christ is the only hope for mankind. And we have been called to right these wrongs in God's name. Every single one of us has a job to do.

Lord, I am convicted. Keep me convicted. Break my heart for what breaks yours and move me to do something about it. Make me move when I feel the Spirit moving me and crush that feeling of anxiety when I fear someone will ask something of me that makes me uncomfortable. Let me be your hands and feet. God has left me here to leave a mark. Let me leave a mark in His Holy Name.