Hi, welcome to Praise Talk 570. What do you want to praise God for?”
“Hello, this is Todd. I got pulled over by a cop for driving too fast yesterday. But thank God I got away with only a warning.”
“Thanks for calling, Todd. Let’s go to line 4. Jenna, why are you calling to praise God today?”
“Hi, thanks for taking my call. I’m calling because with the Lord’s help I’ve been able to lose four pounds this week. Praise His name!”
While we’re encouraged to be thankful (see Col. 3:15; 4:2; Heb. 12:28), and we’re certainly grateful for any token of God’s love and support in our lives, wouldn’t it be a good idea to step back and ask ourselves what the above statements say about God?
While we can even rejoice with Todd that he didn’t get a traffic citation, what about the person who hears this and thinks, Great—while God was getting Todd off the hook, my grandson still has a brain tumor.
And while Jenna can thank God for giving her the strength to pass up desserts for an entire week, 16,000 children around the world are still dying of hunger-related causes each day.* Shouldn’t our prayers to a loving God include petitions that He do more to help them?
Ever since Job’s friends tried to comfort him by explaining God’s inscrutable ways, finite men and women have presumed to describe an infinite God in terms of their own narrow self-interests.
Glib answers to the complex problem of evil and suffering in the world are an affront and a sacrilege to an all-knowing, all-wise, all-powerful God. They do not reflect well on God or His people.
Stop. Think. Speak.
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* www.bread.org/hunger/global/
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Stephen Chavez is coordinating editor of the Adventist Review. This article was published April 12, 2012.
