In my last post I wrote about a time when Jesus said no to
His own hunger. “Big deal,” we think. Our troubles go much deeper than an empty
stomach. Broken relationships. Evil. Pain. What does God say about these?
There is a sense in which God denied His own desires long
before Jesus came to earth. His first great act of self-sacrifice was when He
gave us free will. God could have created humans who would do all the right
things. We could have been His puppets, and the world would have been perfect.
But a puppet cannot love. It cannot have a relationship.
God willingly subjected Himself to the pain of rejection so
that a relationship with us would be possible. He gave us the right to say no
to Him.
I still don’t have an answer to unanswered prayer. I know
one thing. The pain in my life drives me closer to God. I know a second thing.
God chose to experience pain Himself to be close to me. That is enough.
