“O Lord, how long shall I cry, and You will not hear? I cry out to You, ‘Violence’ and You do not save.” Habakkuk 1:2

Over the past several weeks, we saw two hurricanes kill over 200 lives between Florida and North Carolina and then factor in the billions of dollars in property damage. Many times, tragedies point to the two greatest questions that everyone wrestles with at some point in life – “Why does God…?” and “Why doesn’t God…?”

If we’re all honest, we’ve all felt like shaking our fists at God! All over this world there are people who are going to sleep on a tear-stained pillow shaking their fists at God and asking one of two questions, “Why did you God?” or “Why didn’t you, God?”

If you’ve ever felt like shaking your fist at God, you aren’t the first and you won’t be the last.

In our new series in the Book of Habakkuk, we find the prophet wrestling with the above questions. These questions caused him unbelievable depression and unmeasured discouragement. He’s looking at a world collapsing around him – a world like ours right now – where it seems like everything not nailed down is coming apart, where it seems like the bad guys are winning more than the good guys, and where the naughty and the nasty seem to be defeating the neat and the nice. He’s wrestling with this question, “God, if You are good and supposed to be in control, why is this world the way it is?” Maybe you feel like Habakkuk as he was drying up in a desert of doubt.

When we stand before pain and problems, when we get hit with tragedy and trials, we have a choice of confronting life’s hardships from a hopeless evolutionary, atheistic worldview or a hopeful biblical worldview.

Atheist Richard Dawkins writes from his worldview, “In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.” To me, that's just flat out depressing!

But from a biblical worldview, Christianity presents a very different approach. By removing God from life’s struggles we remove all hope. Without God, there is no ultimate justice and no life beyond death. I believe atheism is a hopeless faith!

The cross of Christ lays at the heart of Christianity when it comes to suffering and sorrow. And this is where God dramatically enters the picture! Christ was “God in the flesh” as He hung on the cross. And this fact alone gives us hope in all our suffering because it shows that God was not distant or detached from our suffering. He willing engaged in the suffering of our earthly existence to prove to us that He does experience sorrow and suffering! This is why the apostle Paul wrote that God is the “God of all comfort.”

Beyond the suffering of the cross, the Bible reminds us that there is hope! The resurrection of Jesus means that death is not the end, and that changes everything!

God doesn’t guarantee a release from the physical process of death, but He does guarantee us a salvation that surpasses pandemics, hardships, cancer and death. Atheism can’t offer anything that brings hope to our existence.

God bless you,

Pastor Dave