It’s interesting how many of us will say, “I am all alone.” You are not alone. You may not have the physical presence of an individual at your side but you are not alone. Sometimes it seems even extraordinary how directly the Scriptures speak to us about what has been happening in our world and in our lives.
Job had argued with God: “Why did this happen to me — all this suffering?” He wants answers, and God, being God, has no need to give answers. It isn’t that God doesn’t love him, but God is trying to bring him through that suffering to some new reality of relationship with God.
Jesus/God is always with us in the midst of our worst troubles, the most terrible sufferings that we could endure, Jesus is there to be with us. I think as I look back on what happened this past week, that those people in South Carolina from that church give us an inspiring example of people who suffered unbelievably, cruelly, a kind of terrorism, really. A person gets up in the church and begins to kill people. What was their response? I don’t know if you had the chance to hear, or see it, or read about it, but when he was brought into court for arraignment, the families of those who had been killed had a chance to speak to him. It was through closed-circuit television, but a number of them spoke about how in spite of what he had done, they loved him and they forgave him.
To me that seems almost impossible that they could immediately love and forgive the very one who did it. We have to try to nurture an awareness of Jesus being present to us in every circumstance of our life — not only being present, but pouring forth God’s love upon us.
Let that love of God in Jesus impel us to reach out to others in love
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