Boston Marathon 2013 – Is God absent?

This is a very tough question because our fleshly reality, our material sense of things would say, yes definitely — and furthermore, evil is very present and active.  There was one man who walked this earth and lived among the evils of this world and yet proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that evil does not have the power or presence it appears to have. The man I’m talking about was Christ Jesus.

Think with me for a minute about what he demonstrated to prove that God is not absent and His power of good prevails in the midst of seeming evil.  Jesus healed incurable fleshly ills and diseases, stilled powerful destructive storms, fed multitudes of people when it appeared there was no place to get enough food for everyone. He brought complete peace and healing to people who were possessed with devils.  And he raised the dying and dead to life, including himself.

What was the point of all this?  I’ve asked myself that many times.  Mary Baker Eddy, a world renowned religious leader and radical Christian thinker whose works I study, help me to see that he was showing us the love of God present with us, right where it appears evil is present and powerful.  It has occurred to me that he was showing us a reality – or the reality – a power, a presence always at hand, always available, no matter what situation evil would try to throw our way.  He proved evil powerless, when God’s almighty, everpresent power was understandingly appealed to or known.

Jesus viewed things through his innate God given, Christly spiritual sense and told us we could do the same, through our own innate spiritual or Christly sense.  He was the Wayshower, showing us the way to think and pray.  He showed us that there is hope and peace and good and healing right where evil appears to have power and presence.

What happened today at the Boston Marathon will not make me lose hope in God who is Love as the Bible refers to Him/Her.  I am holding even stronger to the reality through prayer that God is here and now to bring healing to anyone injured, hope to those who feel hopeless, living waters of blessing to those who need refreshment from the evil ways that seem apparent in this world, peace to those who might feel hate or anger, and transformation to those who would be used to do evil acts.  I pray to know that a God who is everlasting Life, manifests, maintains the eternal life of His creation, and is providing the balm of comfort, peace and strength to those hearts who have lost loved ones.

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?  Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  (Romans 8:35, 37-39)