Have you ever wondered why God delivered and rescued one person but left others to “suffer their fate”?
I remember reading about the story of Daniel in the Lions den, first as a child in my Sunday school class and then later with a little greater maturity under my belt.
In the course of studying history and in particular the history of the Christian church I considered myself part of, I discovered that first century Christians were regularly “thrown to the Lions” in arenas as entertainment. I also learned of many other gruesome and horrific actions taken against and upon the persons of those who professed Christ including being burned alive and even being crucified just as Christ himself had been crucified.
In meditating upon the word of God and thinking in my deepest soul about what the Bible stories revealed to me about the attributes and character of the God I was aligning myself with, I found myself wondering why Daniel was rescued from the Lions but those later Christians weren’t?
I wondered why some people were delivered, like Shadrach Meshack and Abednego but not the Christians in Sudan or Nigeria today?
Did God only reach out his hand of power when there was a story to be told? Is it simply a matter of faith or lack of faith? Didn't the Bible teach us that God was not a respecter of persons, but a respecter of conditions? Was it about dedication or lack of dedication on the part of the believer or unbeliever? What about these stories could I discover about God himself and the people of God who believe and trust him?
This one thought continually highlighted and pressed itself upon my heart; God has an eternal perspective that we in our limited humanity cannot even begin to grasp.
Then I found myself wondering if that is the answer, is it an acceptable answer? Which actually leads me to a further question! Who am I or any other created being to question the one who created us?
Which led me to think of Job. When he went through the devastation and the horrific loss along with his wife, of their 10 loved children and everything else in their lives, and he asked God about it, the answer he got is astounding and marvelous all at the same time;
“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the world?” God asked back.
And that led me to what I felt was a simple answer.
I am not God. You are not God.
We do not know all of the many many mysteries of the universe and of the supernatural and the spirit and of God himself! We simply don’t know what we don’t know!
Only God knows these mysteries, precisely because he alone is God! And we are left with a simple choice.
Trust him and receive the many benefits that come from that, even while we suffer the effects of our sinful nature and this sinful fallen world we live in, or don’t trust him and accept the consequences of that choice whatever they may be.
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