An Open Letter to God

Dear God,

I took down my Christmas tree today and, unlike most other years, I took it down with a sense of sadness. For the first time in my life I took it down wondering if this was the last year I would have a Christmas tree. I wondered if I would even see a Christmas 2005. In a world full of catastrophe, terrorism and sickness, will I live to see the end of this year? No one really knows for sure. This may be the last time I see these ornaments, the last time I gaze with wonder at a sparkling tree.

God, this whole thing with the earthquakes and the tsunamis, well.. I’ve found it pretty unnerving. It’s made you seem sort of capricious, and that’s left me confused and frightened. So I go into this new year wondering and grieved.

It’s not that I don’t believe in You; You’ve done so many wonderful miracles in my life and in the lives of many that I love. The problem is that I just don’t understand these seemingly senseless disasters that You allow, or maybe even arrange. I just don’t understand their purpose. I don’t understand the suffering. I guess I don’t understand most suffering, but the big mass suffering is the hardest to understand.

When it’s caused by evil people, I somehow find it easier to accept because I suppose I figure You’re just not intervening with what we idiot humans are doing here on earth. But when it’s caused by an act of nature.. well, God, it almost feels like it’s actually YOU doing it because it sometimes seems as if YOU’RE the one who controls nature, as if it was YOUR fist that drove the earthquake and YOUR breath that raised those waves. That makes it hurt all the more.

And it’s not like I’m angry. I guess I feel more frightened and hurt (and maybe a moment of bitterness here and there). Some of those people have lives that are worse than Job’s. They were impoverished before this crisis and have now lost the little they had along with their beloved children – I read about one woman losing all eleven of her kids – and they will be even more impoverished AND traumatized after this catastrophe. It’s so hard to understand.

I know it’s not my place to question You but, through Jesus, we may come into Your presence and lay our requests before You. My request is to just be at peace about all of this. I have cast my lot with Jesus. I believe that Jesus is Your Son and that what He has said about You is true. I follow Him into Your presence and believe that You are all good, all powerful, all loving. I believe that Jesus died to reconcile me to You, Oh Father. I will continue to follow Jesus to You. I will continue to cast my lot with Him. But, God, I have to say that I am one that mourns and needs comforting. I am one that hungers and thirsts for righteousness. But I am also one that has been blessed by You, Your Holy Spirit and by Your Son, Jesus Christ. How do I reconcile all of this? I don’t know.