Malachi 1

Verse 2: "I have loved you," says the Lord. "But you ask, 'How have you loved us?'

I haven't posted on my blog for a couple weeks, I have been on vacation and then I took our youth group to the National Youth Gathering in New Orleans. I have driven/ridden more than 3,000 miles since my last post and have had a lot of fun. I worshipped with 35,000 teenagers, listened to some amazing jazz, ate great food and caught up with some beloved friends and family.

But I also have heard and seen some terrible things.

New Orleans still has homes that haven't been touched since Hurricane Katrina 7 years ago... there is still spray paint on the outside of homes left by the National Guard indicating how many lifeless bodies were found.

I went to the World War 2 museum and saw all kinds of various weapons designed to kill other human beings. I am proud that my country fought valiantly to save the world from oppression, but was left incredibly sad by the fact that it needed to. There are pictures of Japanese soldiers using live Chinese prisoners as dummies for bayonette training. And I don't even have the words for the concentration camps and the piles of bodies... just tears.

Just when I was thinking that we have come so far since then, the news of the Aurora shooting comes across my twitter feed. All I could say or think was, WTF? Is this a joke? What kind of person even thinks up such a plan? And then carries it out? Again, I was speechless.

So yeah, it is easy to ask God "How have you loved us?"

God's answer in Malachi 1 is incomplete. It is just a list of favors that God has done for Israel. God gives no indication of having felt what they have felt, God just complains about the food they have been offering.

If God showed up in the midst of the sorrow and pain in Aurora and started complaining about their offerings, I'd find a new profession.

But that's an incomplete picture of who God is. The message of the cross is suffering, sorrow, pain and death... and God felt it all. God knows how we feel because God has felt it. God sat idly by while His son was being murdered the most painful way possible. Just like a parent who could not get to their child in the movie theatre.

God went through that pain for a reason, so that we might be given the gift of everlasting life. Death no longer is the end, it does not, will not, and cannot win because Jesus has won.

In times like these we ask "How have you loved is?"

God's response is, "Let me tell you about my Son."