Tuesday, 17 December, 2002

This is a part of a series of devotions based on: God Was In This Place & I , i Did Not Know - by Lawrence Kushner.



We continue to take a look at God in the midst of evil. This is particularly important as we live after the devastation of the Holocaust. Evil is a difficult reality to deal with especially as we hear some of the stories from the scripture.

Biblical accounts of earth swallowing villains, seas splitting to save innocents, or wicked nations being blotted out seem now, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, clearly to be metaphors - never meant to be taken literally. If the world of the Bible were so ontologically different from our world today as to permit such divine intervention, then truths from such a time would be irrelevant. For us, the snowflakes and rays of sunlight fall without discrimination on righteous and wicked alike. This is simply how the world works. And all theology after the Holocaust must begin with this acknowledgment... What then is evil and where does it come from?



"Like in the Bible..." How many times have you heard that kind of a statement when referring to miraculous events and great interventions into our world? Some people will actually say that our God doesn't act like that anymore. Others will claim that if these things don't happen, God is not active in your life and therefore your faith must not be strong enough. Well, first of all, there is never a time when God is not active in our lives. Second, if God is only active when something "grand and out of the ordinary" take place, then what do we do with the majority of people whose illness never goes away...whose lives are not spared...etc. Why are we so afraid to talk about metaphors. I suppose people begin to think that an event or story is not true if it is a metaphor. I don't buy it. The only way we can talk about the way God can make for new life and bring life into a community that is facing hopelessness it through stories that help to ignite a Spirit of life that cannot be quenched. In the face of a reality where the rain and the sun falls on the righteous and the wicked alike...or say it any way you like...our God is with us in the midst of it all...all...for all time and in all places. What stories help us to bring the life our God calls forth from us no matter what the situation?



Connection: Can we walk through today praising God for God's mighty acts within this day even as we have a mundane and ordinary day? I think there is much to see within God's compassionate and powerful grasp even as we face whatever evil or good enters our lives.



Lord God you preside over all things. You remain with us even as we become blind and lose our hearing and will not turn to you any more. Praise be to you for keeping your promises and being eternally for us in all the days of our lives. Amen.