When He Comes, Will He Find Faith on the Earth?

Will this tragedy change anything?

People won't change. They never do. The only thing we learn from history is that people don't learn from history. After 9/11 the churches were full of people seeking God - why? Because they were afraid and wanted short-term help out of their predicament. They soon drifted away again.

As soon as the threat passes, people forget. We have had it too good for too long, and have got used to instant answers and immediate panaceas for our pain. We have advanced to the point of being able to produce medicine which makes more of us live far longer than was possible 100 years ago, and now most people in the West expect to be able to pop an pill and cure anything instantly. From the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil we have made gods of ourselves - and when faced with something we cannot control; something which faces us with the truth that we are still vulnerable, frail, weak, and mortal, we are petrified.

Yes, we are all going to die, as someone has said - we must either s--t or die.

Yet, most people spend their lives trying to forget this, avoid it, and reject the inevitable, instead of doing the one thing which would deliver them from their fear of death.

But only the ones to whom it is given will accept this.

It plays out in Christians' lives too. If we were truly dead to self, we wouldn't try to save ourselves all the time. Life is all about abandoning self to God. If we counted ourselves dead, then nothing that we were confronted with in this life would worry us.

Because our life is hidden with Christ in God. He can either deliver us in problems now, in this life, or He can take us to be with Him, through death, or He can rapture us in His time.

Whatever He chooses to do is in His sovereign pleasure. Any way, we are His, and it's not about us, but about His plan for a sick, fallen world. He knows every sparrow that falls, and He will do what is right by every one of us.

So in the midst of suffering, we can still be at peace and have His joy.