gifts reflecting the giver.

There is this theme that has rumbled in my soul for years. And I encounter it and I consider it and it aggravates me until He tells me to put it away and be still knowing that He is God. Sometimes that is the only answer for the moment but I always hold out hope that I will understand. I want to know Him well enough that it all makes sense.

The idea was prepped by recent reading and then brought into the light by my dear friend Annette. If God is good, then how all this ugly. And there really are a million trite ways to answer this rumble of thunder but can any stand up to the fire when lightning strikes?

I know it has to do with His Justice and Mercy. I understand that the potter has the right to make whatever he wants for whatever purpose or end, but that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I heard a couple days ago about a baby boy. Sovereignly planted in a messed up mom's womb. Carefully tended and sustained. Born to be sexually molested from infancy... And I understand that all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God and deserve eternal damnation, but

"7b you hid your face;
I was dismayed.

8 To you, O LORD, I cry,
and to the Lord I plead for mercy:
9 “What profit is there in my death,
if I go down to the pit?
Will the dust praise you?
Will it tell of your faithfulness?
10 Hear, O LORD, and be merciful to me!
O LORD, be my helper!”

And who will teach that baby boy to plead with a merciful God?

I always had a hard time watching nature shows. I never wanted the poor baby gazelle to become the lion's food. My brothers would answer me half in mockery over my sensitivity, "would you rather the lion die?". I always voted for the sick, the weak, the underdog. They almost never made it...And God tells us in Job 38:39-41 that he is the one who picks out the week ones; he's on the other team!

I'm reading through a book with my mom about God's gracious gifts. All gifts. All things! And there was the story of an amish mother who's son was killed in a farm accident and their peaceful surrender to God's will. I pushed back with "to them it is grace because they can see God's hand in it and it chases them to Him but what of the family it chases away from God, how is that a good gift?"
To which my mother replied, "does the gift change because of the view of the recipient? Can a good gift, given out of goodness be evil simply because the one to whom it is given is evil?"

And I wonder with Annette if all of those people who find their way into her emergency room broken and bleeding have been given a good gift if only they would receive... but that is a hard word. Mercy. Grace. We don't often equate them with pain and sorrow and memories we wish we could forget.

So I pray for the baby boy who from my standpoint today has no hope, that God would hear and be merciful to him. That even this mire into which he was born would be the stuff of life that chases him to his only rescuer. Oh that all our emptiness and pain and the things we wish we could forget that had been done to us and that we have done would all become grace to us and chase us to the One true lover and renewer of our souls.