Moments of Conviction
There are probably two things in this world that cause me to drop my speed a full 10mph while driving late to school - cops and conviction. Today it was the latter. We had a beautiful Michigan snowfall last night accompanied by ice; I know because it was stuck to my car this morning making me more late. So there I am, already late to school, and still speeding down the freeway at 80mph, and the roads are slick. Being that it was 8am, there were plenty of cars around me and for a brief moment I started thinking about that question that nags at the minds of Christians and everyone else struggling with the reality of God: "Why do bad things happen in a world God created?" Being that I grew up in church and have been attending Christian College to be a minister for the last six years, my standard response came to mind, "Bad things happen because we were created with free will. We have the choice of good or evil. Therefore bad things happen in a world God created, because he created us with the ability to do good or evil." (OR to accept or reject God's love and reciprocate, but that's another sermon). So I have all these cars around me, I'm speeding, I am reflecting on the causes of evil circumstances in our world, AND I remembered "hey these roads are icy ... I could cause an accident if I'm not careful." Then I had a revelation. Actually, that was the revelation - I could cause accidents (bad things). I realized that bad things don't always happen because someone CHOSE to do evil (certainly there are instances of this), but I realized that bad things happen when people stop thinking about others and start looking out for their own interests. I was only interested in getting to school as fast as possible. Because of my lack of caution or concern for the other people on the road, I could have caused innocent people serious injury or death today. Now that's convicting. Not that I am in deep thought mode or anything, it's just something to think about. More importantly for me, I have reminded myself why it is important to follow God's commands - he created the world and me, we live in his kingdom, and when we live rightly with others in mind we bring God glory and promote good in the world rather than cause death. There's my world peace speech for the day.