God Shows Up

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Maybe you've heard someone ask the question before. Perhaps that someone was you. In Judges 6:13, Gideon asked a similar question of the Angel of the Lord: 

Gideon said to Him, “O my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.”

The people of Israel had handed down from generation to generation the history of God's faithfulness to His people. But in Gideon's day, they were plagued by the Midianites, hiding in hills and caves, starving and destitute. Where was God? Where were His miracles? And why had He abandoned His chosen people?

Judges 6:1 tells us, the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord. So the Lord delivered them into the hand of Midian for seven years. Okay, so they weren't exactly "good"; they hadn't exactly obeyed God. But they had cried out. We're not told just how much time passed before God sent a prophet, before the Angel of God paid Gideon a visit, but I'm sure (call it personal experience) the words of repentance and desperation had only left the mouths of the people when they started looking for relief. God, if You are with us, why is this happening? Where is Your power, Your deliverance? 

Let me just remind us all, God's presence does not guarantee ease. Just because we belong to Him, just because He has promised never to leave or forsake His people, doesn't mean we won't feel the pangs of hunger or the sting of death among our family. We are still very much present in this world --in fact, we are commanded to be! --and we will suffer the trials and tribulations of being human in a broken world. But it does not mean God is not with us.

Secondly, God's presence is not always accompanied by miracles as we would define them. Read through Scripture and find the miracles. Easy, right? Waters parted and calmed, babies brought forth out of closed wombs, leprosy healed and the dead raised. But what of the prophets who obeyed day after day despite ridicule and persecution? What a miracle that is! Or eighty-year-old Moses leading all those rebellious, angry people forty years across a barren land; he never walked off the job, never found himself under a flock of vultures circling overhead. Or Paul breathing out murderous threats against Jesus' disciples, radically transformed by and encounter with the Living Christ. When we talk about God "showing up" in our situations, too often we have expectations, schedules; we define miracles as we would like them done. What we're really seeking is for God to please us rather than seeking to please Him.

Which brings us to the Angel's answer to Gideon: 

Then the Lord turned to him and said, “Go in this might of yours, and you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Have I not sent you?” (Judges 6:14) 

Gideon was part of the miracle! You have been sent! Are we doing what we're supposed to be doing, or are we sitting around waiting for God to whisk us away in a fiery chariot or shut the mouths of hungry lions? I'm not saying He won't, mind you, but I am saying that sometimes we are the miracle; it is the simple obedience of His people that changes the course of history and makes an eternal difference in the lives of others. Rather than wasting our time questioning the goodness of God, the presence of God, or the plans of God, let's work on our obedience to God and watch Him work His good in the lives of all people.