Autocorrect. A modern invention that operates in the background of most devices we type on. Correcting our mistakes and faux pas. We hardly even notice it’s there, until it goes wrong. Then we notice. Then we set up whole websites devoted to sharing the amusement of an autocorrect fail. It’s a bit unfair really isn’t it? You can see how a mostly useful tool can get labelled rubbish. Or how a mostly devoted disciple can get labelled an idiot. Or how a totally loving God can get labelled a bully.
The difference of course is that God doesn’t go wrong, merely our perception of Him. We assume God is like the autocorrect for most of our lives. Always there, working away in the background, correcting our mistakes and making our paths straight, and we barely even notice, or if we do notice we don’t thank Him. Just as we don’t thank the autocorrect for every saved mistake, after all it’s only doing it’s job right?
But then one day it happens, something goes wrong, we experience a level of hurt that we never signed up for when we said yes to God. Our world falls apart and our autocorrect theology has no way of coping, so the blame must lay with God. And so God, as per, gets the bad press. ‘If God is so loving and powerful how could this happen?’ the critics cry ‘He is either unloving or impotent!’ they rally. But when things go well are they asking where God is then? Is the Christian thanking God for making things well? And while this is going on the fulcrum of time remains a man-God dying on a tree.
I don’t know if your life is going well or badly at the moment. I don’t know if the hurts you have experienced are worse than the ones that have befallen me. But I do know that if you cling to that man-God, if you cling to Jesus, through the good times and the bad times, as He clung to the cross for you, then your perspective might just change. You might just catch a glimpse of the true God, who would do anything for His people, and in fact already has.
Job 1:21 “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.”
