In meeting with various individuals, I am learning that one question is being asked more than any other.

“If God loves me so much, why doesn't He make the pain go away?"

I don't know the immediate answer to that question. But, if God is good, then I must believe that any trial that comes my way has a bigger purpose than I realize.

I drove in the streets of the city of London several years ago. What an new and exciting experience! My biggest fear during those days was climbing into the car and entering traffic on the right side of the road instead of the left, and meeting with disaster. It would have been so easy to do. The only way I avoided that was to be constantly alert and conscious of the British rules of the road. It is difficult to learn new habits when old ones run at a deep instinctive level.

Our lifestyle habits are like that. And when Jesus Christ becomes our Lord and Sovereign through the process of conversion, we suddenly become aware of a whole new set of “traffic rules” to live by.

As a student, I was working at a summer job in a farm machinery factory in Winnipeg, Manitoba. We were in the lunch room, and I had an opportunity to discuss my faith with another worker who was a couple of years older than I was. After I shared what was on my heart, he responded: "I have a lot of admiration for you!"

My heart leapt at the thought that maybe I had found a kindred spirit. "Why?" I asked. "Are you a believer?"

"Oh, no!" he responded, " I just think that it's great that you have such a strong faith. Whatever you believe, man, that's your reality! And we all need something to believe in. Doesn't matter what it is."

In a recent religious forum discussion, one of the participants raised the issue of paradoxes in the Bible. He used the story of Abraham and Isaac as an irrational paradox that invites us to respond with a faith that leaves reason behind in the dust, so to speak. Abraham was commanded by God to sacrifice Isaac, his son of promise in his old age. So far so good. Often we are asked to obey directives we do not understand. But the claim being made here is that the Christian faith is something that should NOT be given a rational basis at all; that our faith is (and ought to be) a blind leap of faith. The assertion is that Christians should not waste so much energy attempting to ‘prove’ anything about their faith, because faith and reason are antithetical. “If you can prove it, it can’t be faith”, seems to be a prevailing sentiment, particularly among the post modern crowds. Mark Twain apparently said, “Faith is believing something you know ain’t so!”

Certain items have jumped out at me in the news lately.

A family is taking a chain of fast food restaurants to court, because their child eats there regularly and is now obesely overweight.

A undercover cop is assigned to go into an illegal gambling establishment to do some sleuthing. In the process, he gets addicted to gambling, and loses not only the cash float he is given, but steals and loses over $100K. Now there is a question of whose responsibility this is, and should he take the police department to court and sue them for his losses?

A student stabs her vice principal with a letter opener. Her defense is PMS.