I COULDN’T BELIEVE IT.
I was still dealing with pushback from yesterday morning’s blog post titled, “Where is God when bullets fly?” and then up pops the news flash:
Bomber strikes Boston Marathon.
A childhood friend of mine was hoping to run in that race.
I went to his Facebook page to look for a post. Nothing. I don’t have his phone number. So I emailed him. Still waiting.
As I watched the video, I thought about what I had said in that day’s blog.
I said that God is at work through us, trying to stop bullets.
I’ve been wrong lots of times in my life.
Not this time.
Watch closely the video of the Boston Marathon bombing.
Once the shock wave passes, yet while the smoke is still roaring, brave souls charge into the blast zone.
They rush over the fence.
They rip it down.
They pull it out of their way.
They’re frantically clawing toward the fallen.
That’s what I would expect God to do.
I went to the internet and Googled the bombing. I saw pictures that no American television station would broadcast.
A young man in a wheelchair, holding onto what remained of his legs as rescuers rushed him away. He had no legs below the knees. I could see bones and tendons hanging from his left knee down to about where his ankle would have been.
My wife is a nurse.
I called her into my office to watch the pictures with me.
“Oh, my!”
She said that over and over.
“She’s dead!” my wife said as she stared into a picture of a rescuer checking the carotid artery for a pulse.
“How do you know?”
“Look at the eyes. And the lips are white.”
Where is God?
I saw him.
He looked to be a teenage girl, carrying a woman on his back.
Then he was an Asian lady in a red baseball cap, pushing the guy with no legs.
Or maybe God was the guy in the beard and cowboy hat running alongside, holding the tourniquet. Or, who knows, maybe the other bearded guy in shades, holding the artery on the other leg.
He could have been the Boston cop, with both hands cupped around his mouth, barking out rescue orders.
I wonder. Could he have been the grown man crying on the shoulder of a terrified woman?
Perhaps God hadn’t lost it. Maybe he was the lady physician in the ponytail trying to calm a man as she held his right leg in a splint while someone else pushed him in a wheelchair. I couldn’t see the man’s eyes because his face was shredded and swollen, and splattered in blood.
Maybe God was the guy in the green, padded suit, looking for an unexploded bomb.
OK. I can’t be absolutely sure who God was.
But I’m pretty sure he was there.
“In a little while the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you will live, too. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and that you are in me and I am in you” (John 14:19-20, New Century Version).
—Jesus
We all had a very emotional day yesterday and these two blog entries need to be presented together – somehow I think the Holy Spirit guided you to write something that needed to be said during this crisis. You reminded me that we (humanity) needs to take responsibility for these ills and that God works through us in such horrible circumstances.
Many people often ask, where is God when things like this happen, and I often lament myself – and like Habakkuk, I just find myself worshiping God because where else and to whom can we go? God never answered suffering Job – he got a litany of questions from God and the Apostle Paul in Romans 9 tells us to shut up by saying “who are you clay to speak to the potter?”
One comment yesterday from one of your readers did hit a Biblical note and one that needs to be said: that humanity is sinful and these acts only prove that the world needs reconciliation with God through Christ. Yes, we need to get rid of the assault guns and do all the right things – after all, God made us free responsible people, but the questions we pose should be not why does God allow any of this to happen, but why does God allow any of us to live with all this evil around us? Violence and evil is abundant. My prayer is for many to flee to the one who not only is a refuge in times of trouble, but the one who sets us free from the bondage of sin and regenerates our spirits so that our planet will be like God’s kingdom.
Thank you… I don’t have the words after reading your blog for today other than to say thank you. It is exactly what I needed to read this morning.
thankyou Stephen for your blog here and also to the others who left their comments…. my personal experience after hearing and viewing everything that happened yesterday, I saw God assisting so many of the wounded bystanders and runners thru loving and caring people. Surely God’s nature was active in the aftermath of this terrible attack on children, husbands and wifes and elderly people. Doctors performed surgeries all thru the night and families and friends prayed beside their loved ones fighting for their lives. Blood was donated and people offered their homes for comfort to runners and people who were affected from this unexpected evil. As we move forward…we only become stronger in our Faith and Trust in God… as we come together with our family and friends and others we all can attest the world needs reconciliation with God as mentioned in one of the previous comments. As citizens of Christ we can do our best to serve God by reaching out more to those who are lost as they ask God why? We know why….because sin is in the World… but if he lives in us…we are not of this World, and his Word … that is written for our understanding will comfort us to know…the end of all wickedness and evil will in God’s time be put to Hell and the Saints will live with God forever and ever and to no end. Thanks be to God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.