“O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you ‘Violence!’ and you will not save?” (Habakkuk 1: 2 ESV).
Christians, perhaps above all people, should not need reminding that our world is full of trouble. Chock full. After all, our Lord and Savior told us clearly that “in this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33b) even as He was promising us the gift of peace. Trouble is inescapable, coming uninvited in so many ways: as a natural disaster, as disease, as accident, as a sad and sorry twist of fate, and as evil.
But knowing we live in a “fallen world” cannot assuage the assault of incredulity and grief of children being killed at a kindergarten in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. We cry out “violence!” and sadness overwhelms us. I heard the report on the radio and sobbed. Herod’s slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem was one of the first thoughts that crossed my mind. Evil, it seems, has a long memory.
I do not know if there is any easy way to get a sane mind around evil. Habakkuk couldn’t. I can’t. Can you?
In the face of evil we can only cling to goodness and to the promise of peace.
There is one story in the Bible that pinpoints God’s awareness of evil and His plans to set all things right. On a certain occasion, Jesus decided to take a boat ride across the lake with His Disciples. While Jesus slept in the stern, a furious storm attacked the boat. Frantic with fear, the Disciples believed all was lost and they cried out to Jesus. Jesus rebuked the storm. It stopped.
Reaching the far shore, the group was accosted by a tormented and violent man possessed by a legion of demons. Jesus cast them out from the man, saving him. The demons entered into a herd of pigs, causing the herd to stampede and drown in the lake. The man, released from evil, sat quietly at Jesus’ feet.
All the villagers who saw this episode, and the townsfolk who heard about it, asked Jesus to leave. Goodness can be bold, but it is not intrusive. Jesus and the Disciples got back into their boat and went home.
I wonder what the Disciples were thinking, watching the shoreline disappear from view. Have you ever gone through an experience where the whole point seemed pointless? Can’t you hear them ask, “Why cross the lake and risk a storm? Why cross the lake to a people who do not care about your message of love, your message of hope, your message of freedom?”
These seem to be fair questions. Since many of these men were fishermen, perhaps they said, “Well, at least we caught one.”
How much is a soul worth?
On that far shore was one soul who needed Jesus, and Jesus went to save him. Jesus got into a boat for one person and cared nothing about weather and adversity and evil and that makes a profound difference in how I respond to this life of woe and senseless tragedy.
Jesus was teaching His Disciples valuable lessons on that particular journey. The journey exposed the Disciples to human frailty, human need, human indifference, and the unmistakable reality of evil. Later the Disciples would connect the dots and become acutely aware of the lengths He would travel to save the one. They would again confront evil firsthand; having seen it on a distant shore driving pigs into the sea, now it was driving nails into God’s hands and feet on Calvary’s mountain.
The stakes are very high when evil takes hold of a world. And Jesus still crosses over storm-tossed seas to find us when violence clothes our world.
In ignorance I used to fear the words, “Come, Lord Jesus.” Now, I plead them. Send evil into the sea and heal our world; heal the broken hearted.
Amen