A land-slide at Thredbo Ski Resort kills many people, bullets fly at Columbine High School in the U.S.A. and children die. It happened again just recently, when a deranged gunman in the U.S.A. slaughtered 49 people in Orlando, Florida and left as many others wounded. A tyre blows out on a winding highway, and a family's husband and father dies. Planes turned into guided missiles slam into civilian targets, and thousands of innocent people from over 60 nations die in two planes and on the ground at the World Trade Center in the City of New York. Counter-attacks begin against terrorists, and soldiers and civilians - as well as terrorists - die.

Friend, events ranging from genocide to cancer to accidents take lives. Some of these lives are "mere statistics" by virtue of distance and unfamiliarity. But some of them are impossible to think of as statistics. She was my mother. It was your wife and the mother of your two small children. Your child lies motionless in a coffin.

The reality of life is that it is filled with chaos and disorder! And as the living stand by and wait our turn, we speculate. And that speculation becomes a platform both for confidence and scepticism. Some of us gather to pray, while others demand to know "Where was God when that horrible thing happened?" Still others - most of them surely unaware of how they damage faith in doing so - certify every vile event a judgement from God's own hand.

The fact is, my friend, that God has created us with real, rather than make-believe freedom. We choose to do evil as well as good. That is why virtue and vice are terms with meaning. We don't do right things or pursue evil ends because God has written unalterable scripts for our lives. Most times we are able to make free and unforced choices.

A holocaust survivor whose suspicions about God haunted him for half a century, Elie Wiesel finally wrote this to God: "At one point, I began wondering whether I was not unfair with you. After all, Auschwitz was not something that came down ready-made from heaven. It was conceived by men, implemented by men, staffed by men. And their aim was to destroy not only us, but you as well. Ought we not to think of your pain too? Watching your children suffer at the hands of your other children, haven't you also suffered?"

Friend, may we not say the same of God on seeing the genocide in Rwanda, the cancer that took my mother and my father, or the innocents who perished when a jet exploded and plummeted into the Southern Ocean, or a young warrior who falls in pressing a just cause, or another civilian whose death is labelled "collateral damage?"

Well, just in case you have wondered where God was on some awful day in our human experience, now you know. He was suffering with the injured, dying, and grieving - just as He did at Calvary. Just as he will until all things are made new when Christ returns.

Perhaps, even as you have been reading what I have shared with you today, you may still be questioning in your mind, "Where was God when my family were affected by tragedy and loss in our personal life?" - If that is your question, I encourage you to write or email to: Discovering A BETTER LIFE, P.O. Box 1540, Albany, WA 6331, and ask for our FREE booklets titled, "Where was God?", "WHERE TROUBLE CAN'T HURT YOU" and "When Life Lets You DOWN" You will receive these booklets by return mail.