“To whom will you compare me?
     Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One. 
Lift your eyes and look to the heavens:
     Who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one,
     and calls them each by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength,
     not one of them is missing. 
Why do you say, O Jacob,
     and complain, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord;
     my cause is disregarded by my God”? 
Do you not know?
     Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
     the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
     and his understanding no one can fathom. 
He gives strength to the weary
     and increases the power of the weak. 
Even youths grow tired and weary,
     and young men stumble and fall; 
but those who hope in the Lord
     will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
     they will run and not grow weary,
     they will walk and not be faint.
Isaiah 40:25-31 (NIV)

When Judah was conquered by Babylon and went into captivity, it would be very easy for the people to conclude that a) God was not powerful enough to deliver them, having to surrender them to the more powerful god(s) of the Babylonians, or that b) God just plain old didn’t care about them.  Isaiah shows the falsity of that whole line of reasoning in this passage by showing that:  a) God was powerful enough to create the stars out of nothing – surely nothing that people design or do can stymie Him, and b) God is caring, and can easily rescue and empower those who trust in Him.

We see the same kind of reasoning today, both in and out of the Church.  People either believe (and teach) that God is not powerful enough to keep chaos from overtaking the world (even to the point of sometimes making God Himself seem like a fellow victim of evil in the world, like Rabbi Kushner does in When Bad Things Happen to Good People), or that He doesn’t really care, and has left us alone to deal with all of the bad things that are bound to happen to us.

But what an amazingly different picture the Bible (and history!) paints!

God is the creator of everything, despite the fact that many these days deny both His power and the fact of His creation.  They do this without any logical reason (there is nothing illogical about an infinite and infinitely powerful God being able to create a universe like ours from scratch, so there is no logical basis for denying those facts), but when they deny God’s power over every force in the universe, they rob themselves of a strong place to stand in uncertain times.  And, as the creator, God is powerful enough to be able to do WHATEVER needs to be done.

And God is infinitely caring, to the point that He came to the Earth Himself as the God-man Jesus Christ, in order to reveal Himself to us and to give Himself to pay the penalty for our sins, and open the door to eternal life for us.  But again, many have denied this truth, again for no logical reason.  And then, having denied God’s revealed character and power, as well as His revelation that explains everything and give the answer to every question that they are asking, they rail against Him for not delivering or protecting them.

The sad thing is, God tells us clearly in the Bible the “rules of the game.”  We can have the victory here and now if we will come to Him for His deliverance on HIS terms:  faith, repentance, and absolute surrender to His will and His agenda.  That doesn’t mean that if we will come to God that we will have a life free from problems and trouble, or that we won’t get sick or things like that.  Jesus Himself told us that in this sinful and broken world that we live in we WOULD have troubles (John 16:33) but that we should take heart, because through His obedience to God’s commands, His sacrificial death and glorious resurrection, He has overcome the world, and, in Him, we can overcome too, not just for the here and now, but for eternity!

But, even though God has revealed this very clearly to us, and even though He has shown Himself faithful in the lives of every single person who has ever trusted in Him, and even though God is continually holding out His hands to the people of our world, inviting them to simply trust in Him and to receive the same victory over the world that Jesus had, too many people simply turn their backs on Him and His love, preferring to live in rebellion and anger over God not living up to their expectations, and thereby cutting themselves off from the only source of help in the universe.

It’s sad, but the fault is ours, not God’s!