Where's God?

17 dead, mostly high school kids. Horrible. Tragic. Terrible. Evil.There’s a lot of really bad stuff in the world. Right now it seems to be concentrated in Parkland, Florida. But not really. We had the heroic Chicago police commander who was gunned down Tuesday. So far this year, there have been 60 murders in Chicago, alone. Again, that’s just this year and it’s only mid-February. In reality, horrible things are happening every day around the world. The earth is filled with terrible acts and tragedy.Is God ok with all this? If not, why doesn’t he do something?God certainly could have made a world where everything happens exactly the way he wants it to happen. He is sovereign. So he could dictate every minute detail in the happenings of the world, and play us like a giant video game. But then we would be video game pieces and not human.The two possibilities of worlds that God could create would be either a world where there are no moral creatures, and therefore, no freedom of will or ability to make choices; or a world where some creatures do have real choices and those choices have consequences.Because God desired a world where he could enjoy reciprocal loving relationships with people, this demanded that they also have the freedom to choose to love him or reject him. It’s the only way there could be a genuine relationship. We learn from the Scriptures that all of humanity has turned away from God. And while tragedies that we face are not necessarily the direct result of our own specific sins, the fallen world that we live in, now filled with violence, hatred, and natural disasters, is the result of the loss of our connection with God, the aftermath of sin entering the world.In Genesis, Adam and Eve were given the domain of the earth and told to rule over it. When they rejected God’s authority, they relinquished their rule to God’s enemy, Satan. When sin came, this world went to the evil one’s jurisdiction and corruption over all of creation ensued. That’s why Jesus referred to Satan as, “the god of this world.”So, where is God in this? Remember, evil is best defined by what is left when God is excluded. This is a world that is under the devil’s domain. God does intervene on rare occasions, but out of respect for human choice, he has allowed the corruption of sin to work its way to its logical conclusion. The problems of this world are what we have as a result.The Lord does not leave us alone in it, however. He promised to be present with us and to walk with us through our greatest tragedies. But our promise of ultimate deliverance will be realized in the next world, not in this one.If we will look to him in the middle of it, he would love to reveal himself to us.