Apr 9 - "The Plan"

"So it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, 'I have raised you up for the very purpose of showing My power in you, so that My name may be proclaimed in all the earth.' So then, He has mercy on whomever He chooses, and He hardens the heart of whomever He chooses. --- Romans 9:1-18

******************************

This is a pretty tough message to hear. Could it be true that God sometimes chooses that some will suffer? It is possible that He purposefully hardens someone's heart against Him?

Although we would like it to be that God is universally and continually benevolent to all people everywhere at all times, we also have to realize that God's power is infinite and causes all things to happen. There is nothing which occurs that His hand is not in. Knowing this, we are faced with the painful truth that, yes, God is in the good and the bad, for all of these things are a part of His creation.

An easier message would be that the gift of Free Will which God has given to us is the cause of the bad things. The choices we make each day, often for the dark, the hurtful and the hateful, are what brings the sad and imperfect things into the world. With this message, at least we can believe that God wants good for us, but we are the cause of the bad.

But what about earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, crippling drought, tornadoes, dramatic climate change? Since it is not in our power to cause or prevent these things, we must face the fact that God's hand is behind these too. The question then becomes, why? For what good reason or result must these things occur?

When I was in college, a couple of key events caused me to turn away from God; to harden my heart (or to have it hardened?) against Him. The tragic death of my young cousin made me sad beyond belief. I remember saying to myself, weeping outside in the dark after his funeral, "If this is what God is, I don't want to be a part of it." I turned my back on Him and chose to walk away. This event, combined with the philosophy courses I was taking over the next year or so, seemed to give me plenty of evidence that God was just a myth, a being created out of a desire for we as humans to assign power to an entity greater than us. For me, at the time, Jehovah, Yahweh, the God of the ancient Israelites was no more real than Allah, Krishna or Shiva. Did God make this happen, did He harden my heart?

It is not easy to understand and, frankly, I don't have a good way to explain it. All I can say is that I believe God has a plan. Maybe it is as simple as recognizing the fact that there is pain in the world. A large part of what happens on a daily basis causes pain, hardship, loss. These, things, however, are only earthly things. When we shuffle off this mortal coil and leave to be with God in heaven, all of these things we experienced pass away. They are temporary. Yes, sometimes temporary can feel like a long, long time, but eventually, the pain does pass. The evil moves on. The sadness fades.

So, when the pain comes, remember that God has a plan. We must first look to ourselves and ask. "It is me that has turned away?". If not, we should accept that God's greater hand is and work and that something good always comes out of something bad. It is hard. But know that the sorrow is only one part of the Plan and that God has amazing things in store for each of us, if not in this world, then in the next.