Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Is there anywhere a human heart that by nature doesn't have a storm inside? If you are perfectly at-one-with God, you belong in Heaven. Well, at least, it's your job to help those billions who by nature share the universal human problem of alienation from God. "Why has He allowed me to suffer? Why me ... to endure injustice? Is God fair?" One may piously exude all the self-righteous phrases while deep inside unanswered questions destroy our "peace with God" (Rom. 5:1).
Here's a shocker: the closer you come to Jesus Christ, the more you will realize your problem to be. Come very close to Him, and you will "taste" the depth of the darkness He experienced on His cross when He cried out, "My God, why have You forsaken Me?"
If one has never grown up out of innocent childhood, he may never think or feel on that level; but Jesus did. "Why doesn't God do something?" is the heart-cry of the person who dares to think, not only about his own tiny little problems, but about the millions suffering from disasters and wars. And why do the poor have to suffer? And why must the innocent suffer so? "My God, My God, why have You forsaken our world?"
Back again to the cross on Calvary: in that total darkness, while He hung there in that deepest perplexity and despair, He made a choice--to believe that His Father was good even though everything was shouting in His ears that His Father was unjust. In total darkness, in the vastness of empty heart-broken space, He built a great bridge between alienated humanity and God. It's called the Atonement, the at-one-ment. If His Father has forsaken Him, He will not forsake His Father.
On His cross He built something out of nothing like He had created a universe out of nothing. At any cost, He will believe Good News. He will create Good News. You don't have to build that Bridge; all you have to do is believe that He built it.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: November 15, 1998.
Copyright © 2018 by "Dial Daily Bread."
