UCTAA churchlight

Site Search via Google

Meditation 346
God, show the world!

To open a discussion on this article, please use the contact page to provide your comments.

Watching the news this morning on television, I inevitably see the latest on the Shiavo case. There are clips of the demonstrators outside the hospice where Terri Shiavo's body lies dying. And one brief clip shows a clearly anguished young woman, her face turned up to the sky, screaming "God, show the world you still exist!"

I found those words struck a note. "Show the world you still exist." They express a deep faith which permits this woman to make demands of her God - and yet, they show the possibility of that faith being fractured. Subconsciously, she might be beginning to realize her God no longer exists, even if he ever did.

If God exists, as most believers envisage him, then surely he has the power with the blink of an eye to restore Ms. Shiavo to a vital full health, perhaps even pregnant with a new messiah if he really wants to get a message across. But such a God also has the power to do nothing, a power which he is apparently exercising.

How can some believers in God know that he wants this poor unfortunate woman kept alive in her vegetative state? How can they know that he did not want her dead years ago, and the frustration of his will was not the removal of a feeding tube, but its initial insertion?