Author: Katie Ganshert

I can’t even begin to fathom the grief and the horror the people living in Aurora, Colorado have experienced this past week. 

I only know people are hurting. People are devastated. People are angry. And my heart breaks for what they are enduring.

A woman named Marie was there, in theater nine. With her two teenage daughters. She heard the gunshots and the screaming and the terror. She covered her daughters and when the firing slowed, she took her family and ran for the exit.

The next day, she wrote a blog post entitled So You Still Think God is a Merciful God? 

Her answer: Yes. 

God is still merciful and good.

I resonated with this post, because I have loved ones in my life who struggle with this concept. Oh man, do they struggle.

Something bad or senseless happens and they want nothing to do with God.

And I can’t help but think….

How quick we all are to spit on the hand that’s offering to pull us out of the pit, as if that hand is the one that pushed us there. 

I’m not sure any of us realize what a horrifying, terrifying place this world would be if God removed His grace. 

He isn’t the enemy. 

God doesn’t dig these dark, desperate holes. He’s not the one pushing us in them.

The brokenness of this world, the brokenness inside every human heart – this is what makes the pit. These are what push us in.

And God sees His beloved creation desperately trying to claw their way out, incapable of escaping on their own. So in His infinite mercy, He reaches out His hand, in the form of Jesus Christ, and becomes the rescue we can’t be for ourselves.

Jesus doesn’t promise safety or health or prosperity in this world. Any Christian who tells you that hasn’t read the Bible. 

But He does promise hope and this is a hope that brokenness and evil and destruction cannot touch. 

One day, death and the powers of darkness will be defeated and all things will be made new.

Until then…

I pray for healing for those who are hurting.

I pray that God can take the senseless hate in the world and bring beauty from the pain.

I pray that God can use what the enemy intends for destruction to glorify and magnify His name.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.                    -Ephesians 3:20-21

Let’s Talk: Do you struggle with the concept of a loving God when bad things happen?