Perfect love?

Sometimes I wonder if God is present everywhere, when you look at the state of the world it's hard to believe. 

Is He with the five your old girl that was kidnapped off the streets, ganged raped for days and then strangled to death? 

Is He with the child who lost their family at sea?

Is He with the daughter sold by her own daddy? 

Is He with with the little ones struggling in sickness, fighting for a chance?

Is He with the hungry toddler who hasn't eaten for days?

Is He with the orphaned baby, left outside alone? 

Is He with the little boy who isn't safe at home? 

"Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so.

 Little ones to Him belong. 

They are weak but He is strong."

We used to sing this so diligently, it rings in my ear like a haunted melody of a more innocent time. When it was brainless to believe that He is strong when we are weak. That He loves. That we belong. But everything about the world shrieks that He's gone. There's too much horror, there's too much pain. It's just too much now. No one is safe. 

I can understand why people give up on God. I can understand why the love of Jesus can seem comical. I understand that we could easily go down this track. But I believe there is a huge gap that we can't see. We can't see what He sees. He sees hearts and He hears minds. He's been through every historical rhyme. He's beyond time. His heart is broken, He never sleeps. His ways are higher than mine. This doesn't always make everything ok right now, but it makes everything ok in the end. 

But it's hard to understand why the darkness roams our world so freely. Snatching lives, gloating in terror, thriving on the fear it creates.

Stealing 

Killing 

Destroying

The tactics haven't changed, we just live in a smaller world now, a world that is allowed to see so much more than any world before. An unfair world of addiction and of torture. An unfair world of gluttony and starvation. An unfair world of free access to education but no drive to learn and children who are in danger for going to school. An unfair world of shiny malls and barefoot beggars patrolling the streets. An unfair world of social media bullies and desperate people praying for peace. An unfair world of online pornography and captured girls sold ruthlessly. An unfair world full of lives taken for granted and others who are just thankful to breathe through another day.

If we give in, we let them win. 

Even darkness is as light to Him. He is there in the midst where we aren't. It's hard to believe, but we must go on. We need to be stronger, we need to live larger. We need to let love do its thing. Perfect love, casts out all fear? We tend to fear what we shouldn't, that's how we give power to darkness, which then controls our minds. 

At the end of the day, if God is truly God, who are we to ask of His whereabouts; or ask anything at all? But we're impatient like that, we have limited understanding of His Sovereignty and take for granted His endlessly persistant grace. We forget who God is, we forget what He's done, we forget what He's really like, we forget that He is love. We forget that He is the one to reverentially fear. We think we can judge Him, doubt Him, walk away from Him, slander Him, hate Him. We think we can ignore Him, we think we can say or do anything when things don't go our understood way. We forget that He is God. We forget that we are not. We forget that we are nobody. Nobody at all. 

It's His perfect love that casts out all fear. We need to learn how to love, love like He's abundantly shared. May love seize all the choices that we make. And if we don't believe that love is strong enough, we simply don't know who love is at all. 

“We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first.”

1 John 4:19 MSG