{"id":1301,"date":"2019-10-23T16:50:38","date_gmt":"2019-10-23T20:50:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redchairblogs.wpengine.com\/holymoly\/?p=1301"},"modified":"2019-10-23T16:50:38","modified_gmt":"2019-10-23T20:50:38","slug":"why-did-god-make-the-gnats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/2019\/10\/23\/why-did-god-make-the-gnats\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Did God Make the Gnats?"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Edwards was one of my children\u2019s favorite musicians. David was an alum (Class of 1970) and former pastor of two Lynchburg churches, First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and Church of the Covenant. David was also a musician and songwriter. He spent many summers singing with children at Camp Kum-Ba-Yah, teaching them about faith, diversity and love. David\u2019s memorial service was held on campus last summer and his family has recently made much of his work available for free download, so I was listening to a few of my favorites – Why Did God Make the Gnats?<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Why did God Make the Gnats? Why, I wonder Why? \u2018Cause when I go out to play, they fly up in my eye!\u00a0 Some things in life I\u2019ll never know, some things I\u2019ll never understand. But I guess in this big world there\u2019s room for everyone!<\/em><\/p>\n

Poison Ivy is a Pain! It grows where I\u2019m not watching. One day I\u2019m playing hide and seek, the next day I wake up scratching!<\/em><\/p>\n

David wrote this song after his young son asked him why gnats existed. Why there is evil in the world is one of the hardest struggles for humans (theodicy is the academic word for it). Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a famous book in the 1980s, When Bad Things Happen to Good People<\/em>\u201d that says that we cannot hold God responsible for tragedy since God put in motion the laws of the universe to be unchanging. With our own brokenness and our ability to make choices, pain and suffering is inevitable, even if God is troubled by the suffering as well. Others believe that there is an actual force of evil in the world that causes suffering. Still others use suffering as proof that God doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

My children still point out to me, actually quite often, that, \u201cLife is not fair.\u201d\u00a0 They are right – it isn\u2019t. We know that it isn\u2019t fair and yet so often we expect it to be. I always react negatively to the phrase, \u201cGod doesn\u2019t give us more than we can handle,\u201d because in fact there are many times that I see people overwhelmed. That phrase also implies that God directs periods of struggle to a specific person. I just can\u2019t believe that.<\/p>\n

Life may not always be fair…or easy…or pleasant…or good. Sometimes it is messy and miserable and barely survivable. It is a privilege to be with our community in these rocky parts of the journey, I still wish it was easier and better for all of us. You never really know the crises that others are facing. Please be company and support for one another. We may never understand, but we can ease the suffering of others.<\/p>\n

The closing verse of David\u2019s song gives me hope:<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have to ever like the things that make me cry. Besides, I think there\u2019s more that makes me glad to be alive<\/em>!<\/p>\n

Blessings, Stephanie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Edwards was one of my children\u2019s favorite musicians. David was an alum (Class of 1970) and former pastor of two Lynchburg churches, First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and Church of the Covenant. David was also a musician and …<\/p>\n

Why Did God Make the Gnats?<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stephanie"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1QIf6-kZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}