This week has been rough. Tuesday evening an Amber Alert was issued for our area, a young girl had been kidnapped in broad daylight. As the word started to spread and social media exploded, we discovered that this was no random stranger we were talking about. While we were not close friends with the family, we knew the several of the girls relations. Suddenly it was personal, we watched and prayed as we went about our evening chores, though I will admit I wondered what good our prayers would do, I've watched enough SVU to know what the outcome is in most of these cases. As we went to bed that night this little girl and her family were the last thing on our mind and when we woke in the morning the first thing we did was check our phones to see what the latest was. It wasn't good while they had the suspect in custody but they had also found the body of a little girl.
We were heartbroken, of course, everybody was. But for some reason it hit me really hard, I don't know why, maybe because it was someone we knew. Maybe it was because I have a daughter close to the same age, I don't know all I know is for me it went beyond just being sad, I was severely depressed. I wanted nothing more than to return to bed and pull the covers over my head. Worse than that I felt my faith slipping through my fingers. We had prayed and God had let us down, evil had won and a little girl would never be coming home again. I could hear my non-Christian friends asking "How can you believe in a God that allows such an atrocious thing to such a sweet little girl?" And their question became my own.
Then on top of that I had a friend say that we should be praying for her murderer to be saved so that God could get glory and her death would not be in vain. I saw red, there was no way I could ever pray that prayer. The one comfort I had was that God was a God of justice and that man would burn in hell for the rest of eternity for what he had done! And I told my friend that. Nothing would make her death ok, it was just wrong to even suggest such a thing!
As the day went on and more details were released, I began to see that God might have been listening to our prayers afterall.
First, there were the witnesses, people who when they saw this little girl taken from the street. They didn't sit back and say "someone else will report it", they jumped into action and contacted the police and some even chased the vehicle.
Second, the police located the perpetrator and recovered her body in less than 12 hours, I've watched enough crime stoppers tv to know that that is fast (even by tv standards).
Thirdly, when the charges were read rape was not among them. She had been shot once in the back of the head. And while I know that it might still come out that there was more done to her for now it was enough to think that maybe God had kept her suffering to a minimum.
Fourthly, we heard that she had just accepted Jesus as her savior 2 weeks prior to this incident. Knowing that she was in Heaven and no longer suffering was a relief. It also made me wonder if God had allowed her to be taken to spare another little girl who wasn't ready for eternity.
Even with all this though, I still struggled; given that God is all powerful, theoretically He could have broke that man's truck so he couldn't go out that day. He could have made it so that the witnesses were close enough to stop her from being taken. He could have allowed the police to find her sooner. So why didn't He?
I couldn't come up with an answer. There was nothing that could make sense of this. There would never be enough good things that could make up for this tragedy. No amount of charities, changed lives, or salvations could change that for me for I would always ask "could that not have been brought about another way?"
So why do I still believe in God? Because the alternative is just too awful to think of.
If there is no God and we just evolved by chance, as some people believe. Then this is truly the most gruesome and saddest thing that could ever happen. There is still no reason no answer to why, there is no cause for this man to behave the way he did, it is a random act of nature. There is no heaven and therefore no continued existence of this little girl, she ceases to exist. This horrible deed doubles in magnitude if you think that she never made her mark on this world- it is as if she never existed. There is no hope for her family to be reunited with her someday, only empty arms and broken dreams of what should have been.
If there is no God there is no justice, for there is no right or wrong, it's all a matter of opinion and we cannot judge or condemn this man. And even if we do the worst we can possibly do to him is end his existence, he has already lived his life and made his mark on time - if nothing else he will live in infamy as this little girl's murderer.
The questions of why and for what purpose remain and go unanswered and we are left with even more questions like, "what would cause a man to be so evil?"
I am amazed that in situations like these even the most devout atheist when confronted with a situation like this believes in good and evil and heaven and hell.
They believe the perpetrator to have committed an evil, heinous crime and deserves to be punished, often with hell fire and eternal damnation.
They call the victim an Angel and send her well wishes to heaven.
While it may seem be hard to imagine a loving, all powerful God allowing evil to win in this instance. And it might seem cruel to say that there is a greater purpose and plan in all of this. I find the alternative to be much harsher and much more cruel!
