The Suffering God
A friend messaged me the other day with a question about all of the prayers that are being requested for people affected by the recent and impending disasters in the U.S. They wrote: "All this 'prayer business' seems to be messed up and confusing - the disaster IS going to happen, so what exactly are we praying for?" Things are bad right now. There are devastating fires in Montana, California, Oregon and Washington, flooding from Hurricane Harvey in Texas, and what appears to be a disaster-in-the-making as Hurricane Irma approaches Florida. I don't know about you, but there have been more than a few times in my life when I have wondered what God was up to, and why God appeared to do absolutely nothing in the presence of evil and destruction in the world. And I have often wondered what difference my prayers made at all. But what I have come to understand is that while God does not cause all things, God is present in all things. And bec...