October 26th, 2009 by Kristi Stephens

The older I get and the more life I experience, the more I understand that we are all wounded people. Wounded by life, wounded by the consequences of our own sinful choices, wounded by others, wounded by evil.

Some wounds are more debilitating than others. Some have been healed and leave only scars behind. Some are still raw and open, oozing under layers of protective bandages we hope others won’t see. But we all have them.

Abandonment
Abuse
Abortion
Addictions
Death
Disease
Divorce
Hate
Injury
Injustice
Mental illness
Miscarriage
Natural disasters
Neglect
Rejection…

Many others could be added to the list.

At some point as we journey through this broken world, we must wrestle seriously and intentionally to answer the age-old question, “how could a good God allow this?” Whether we wrestle with it because we ourselves need an answer to this question, or whether we wrestle with it because the wounded around us are asking, it is imperative that we consider it.

I am convinced that our God is not only good, but that His Word contains satisfying answers to this question that will allow us to trust Him, praise Him, serve Him through the storms of life that will surely come.

In coming weeks we will be devoting a lot of time to working through two books in Scripture that are essential to constructing a theological perspective on pain, loss, evil – wounds of all kinds. We will first listen to Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, wrestle with the vanity of life in Ecclesiastes. Then we will move on and sit with Job in the ashes of his life.

Bring your wounds – our God is big enough, His grace is deep enough, His Word is rich enough.

All of the posts for this series are indexed here.

Image from wikipedia