Saturday

“The eighteen who died…”

Read Luke 13:4.

         “But I didn’t do anything wrong!!” I could hear my older daughter wailing from across the house, barely audible over the sound of the younger one crying. As I came into the living room, I found the older one near the bookshelf, near tears. Beside her was a giant pile of books and a crying baby. As I pieced together what happened, it became clear it was a situation of bad timing. Big sister pulled a book off the shelf. Book happened to be lynchpin that held all other books on the shelf. Books tumbled off shelf in giant heap. Little sister happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and got bonked by a few of the books.

         In addition to being startled by the cascade of books, my daughter felt strongly the injustice of something bad happening to both her and her sister when she didn’t do anything wrong. It’s that age old question of “why do bad things happen to good people?” I have an extremely kind and wonderful friend whose cancer has just returned. Why? There’s an Old Testament pattern of God punishing whole people groups for their sins—war, pestilence, death. But in Luke 13, Jesus reminds his disciples that accidents happen. Bad things happen. It’s not necessarily correlated to individual sin.

         But in both stories, he immediately reminds them that unless they repent, they too will perish. Why do bad things happen to good people? I’m not sure. But I also know that I’m one of the bad people…one of the sinful ones in need of grace and redemption. -AB

Jesus, please forgive my sin. Remind me that I am fallen and broken. And fill me with joy because of your grace. Amen.