I teach religion classes and there is one question that I continually get asked about God. That is: how can God be real when there are billions of poor starving people all over the world? Or how can God be a truly be love if He allows this to happen? It is probably of of [...]]]> I teach religion classes and there is one question that I continually get asked about God. That is: how can God be real when there are billions of poor starving people all over the world? Or how can God be a truly be love if He allows this to happen? It is probably of of the most difficult questions.

I don’t propose to have an answer. What I do have, however, is the story of my own battle over this question with God and an encounter with Him in Africa that showed me His love for the poor and suffering.

My struggle with God began at the age of fifteen. By this time I had experienced something of suffering and I felt nothing short of disappointed with God. I expected Him to protect me and He didn’t. To keep me safe and He hadn’t.

However the thought that bothered me more even than my own struggles were the thought that there were little, innocent children suffering in third world countries. They were abandoned by parents and God, left to starve and die on the streets. They were made prostitutes, soldiers and thiefs by no choice of their own.

My faith was at a crossroads, my love for God was waning and my trust in Him was failing. So I decided to take up the battle with God. I cried out to Him: how can I love or trust a God who sits there and does nothing whilst His children are hurting? How can God be the God of the Bible: Love, all present, all powerful; when there is so much suffering?

To my surprise, God took me on. His reply to my question came in the form of a mission trip to Africa. When they announced the trip I immediately felt that it was Gods desire for me to go. I only had about a third of the money I needed to go on the trip. But I trusted that God would provide and sure enough, without asking anyone for money I received money from different people often on the very day that the money was due each month.

There is no doubt something is God’s plan when He provides the money to do it!

He prepared me for the trip by leading me to the most amazing scriptures. Particularly in the Old Testament, through chapters like Isaiah 58, God revealed Himself as a God who was passionate about social justice, the rights of the poor and specifically widows and orphans. Over and over I met a God in scripture whose heart belonged to the poor and brokenhearted. Here was a God who preferred to sit in the dirty mud holding a sick child than being lavished with riches on His throne in Heaven, although I’m pretty sure He is allowed to do both. (Just a little tongue in cheek.)

It wasn’t enough for me just to read about this God though, I wanted to see Him with my own eyes and know for myself just how He loved poor and suffering.

He showed me.

When I arrived in Africa I firstly recognized Gods love for the poor in how liberally He had poured out salvation on these people. There were signs of God everywhere. Every bus and building, car and street sign read something like, “Jesus loves you,” “God is love,” or “Jesus is Lord.” Nearly every person you met declared that they knew Jesus, even though their knowledge of the Bible was sometimes limited.

God had made sure that the poor knew Him. In fact they were just poor, needy and abandoned enough to actually need God and make room for Him in their lives.

Secondly I saw His work in Africa. There were children’s home and orphanages and aid organizations everywhere. The children that I met were safe; they had food and clean and water people to love them. His love was shared and poured out in that place. His work was evident, His love was tangible.

Thirdly I felt His love for these children burn like a fire in my own heart. Feeling His love for the children convinced me that He truly loved and cared for the poor. Then I felt a call. I was meant to be a part of the answer to the question of suffering! God’s Church, His Bride, we are called to be Gods Hands and feet and heal the suffering of the broken and poor. You and me, together with God.

Lastly and most beautifully, I saw Him in the eyes of the little orphans I met. Our Lord loves and values these little orphans so much and so tenderly, He defends them so powerfully that He would even say: “whatever you do to them, or don’t do for them, you are doing it to Me.” (Matthew 25:40 paraphrased) I am so melted by this scripture. No one could identify themselves so fully or so humbly with the poor and suffering as Jesus did in that statement. In some mysterious and inexplicable way, God dwells in the poor, suffering with them, just as He does with each of us when we are suffering.

So now I know I have seen for myself that God is there. He is even there in the mud and the dirt and brokenness of Africa. That thought gives me comfort, because wherever God is, soon enough the sick are healed, the lost are found and the captives are set free. That is just the kind of God He is.

Finally I remember God’s promise. That in a blink, the world will come to an end and everything will be transformed. That our time on Earth is a brief sojourn and that there is no doubt that the heaven of the age to come will more than make up for a brief time of difficulty and pain on Earth.

However in the meantime, we can be comforted in knowing that He is there with us in our suffering, and in the suffering of all of his children, working in hidden ways to bring good into our lives.

“In all their distress he too was distressed, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and mercy he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.” Isaiah 63:9

by Louisa Hall

www.gainingfaith.blogspot.com

Fatima Sultan, Ali Ma’ow, Sheik Mohammed Abdi, and Maaddey Diil were killed by members of Al-Shabab, an Islamic extremist organization. The Islamists kidnapped and [...]]]> Washington, D.C. – International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that Somali Islamic extremists beheaded four Christians after kidnapping them on July 27 in the coastal town of Merca, 56 miles from Mogadishu.

Fatima Sultan, Ali Ma’ow, Sheik Mohammed Abdi, and Maaddey Diil were killed by members of Al-Shabab, an Islamic extremist organization. The Islamists kidnapped and eventually beheaded the Christians after they refused to renounce their faith in Jesus Christ.

On August 4, a junior Al-Shabab militant notified all the families of the victims that the four Christians had been beheaded for apostasy. He described the Christians as promoters of “fitna,” a Muslim term for religious discord. The militant, who called himself “Seiful Islam” (“the Sword of Islam”), told the families that the bodies will not be given to them “as Somalia does not have cemeteries for infidels.”

One eye witness account said, “All the four apostates were given an opportunity to return to Islam to be released but they all declined the generous offer.”

The four Christians had been working for a local NGO that helps orphans in southern Somalia.

A Somali church leader who monitors the persecution against the Somali church described the latest beheadings as a desperate attempt to “purify” Somalia by eliminating all Christians from what the Al Qaeda linked terror group considers an Islamic Republic. The church leader added that such murders will only serve as a rich seedbed from where many more house-churches will form.

Al-Shabab is a radical Islamic organization fighting to establish an Islamic state in Somalia and enforce Wahhabi/Salafi Islam, an ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam practiced by the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. The Islamist group controls large parts of Somalia and seeks to overthrow the internationally recognized transitional federal government of Somalia.

The Islamists have been carrying out ruthless attacks against the Christian minority in Somalia. Last year alone, members of the group killed more than a half dozen Somali Christians. In July 2009, Al-Shabab beheaded seven people in the southwestern town of Baidoa after accusing them of converting to Christianity and spying for the transitional federal government of Somalia.

Jonathan Racho, ICC’s Regional Manager for Africa and the Middle East, said, “Al-Shabab has once again demonstrated its utter disregard for the dignity of human life. The majority of Muslims in Somalia, who are also the victims of Al-Shabab’s cruelty, do not support their ideology or practices. It is high time for the international community to take robust measures to end the heinous crimes that Al-Shabab and other extremist groups are committing against the people of Somalia.”

Please pray for God to protect and encourage the underground churches in Somalia.