God is still God

I recently heard from one of my friends for the first time in weeks. The conversation made me realize that even that can be quite some time when you're submerged from your little social network and your cell phone, whether it's busyness or whatever.

While we were talking, we got on the subject of a mutual good friend, and how things were. Unfortunately, the news wasn't good. REALLY not good, actually.

I'm so sad to hear that. Not to mention a number of people back here at home aren't doing well, my friends who are deployed in the armed forces to dangerous parts of the world, more friends moving far away, and the list of things wrong coming from the magic picture box. And so the list goes on and on. What really has happened to this world?

Yet I'm reminded amid all this great tragedy, sadness, and uncertainty about how God is unchanging and His love is steadfast.

Psalm 66:16-20
¹⁶Come and hear, all you who fear God,
and I will tell what he has done for my soul.
¹⁷I cried to him with my mouth,
and high praise was on my tongue.
¹⁸If I had cherished iniquity in my heart,
the Lord would not have listened.
¹⁹But truly God has listened;
he has attended to the voice of my prayer.

²⁰Blessed be God,
because he has not rejected my prayer
or removed his steadfast love from me!

Hebrews 10:23-25
23Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. ²⁴And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, ²⁵ not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

Revelation 21:3-4
3And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. ⁴ He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away."

I've mentioned in a previous post about how I had to read a book for senior seminar by Rev Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called Strength to Love. It's actually a collection of his sermons and it really does cover a lot in not very many pages. One of my favorite points from that collection had to do with adversity, which not only is relevant to the Civil Rights movement, but to anyone who faces adversity today.

In a nutshell, he taught that just because we pray and wonder about where God IS and wonder WHY bad things happen, doesn't mean that God isn't ministering to the hurting and broken in some unseen way that we can't understand. Just as the prophet Isaiah and the apostle Paul wrote, no one can fully understand the intricate workings of God. It seems God was at work ministering to Joseph every step of the way even while he was in a hole in the ground, left for dead by his brothers or while in an Egyptian prison. Why would it be any different now?

As for my friend who's still hurting and sick months later and has me worried and wondering why, I will keep praying anyway. God is still God and I don't believe He ever abandoned my friend.