In 1775 in Lisbon, Portugal, there was an enormous earthquake that killed an estimated 50,000 people. Many of them were in church when it happened. In the late 1930s through the mid-1940s, as many as twenty million people died in Nazi concentration camps. In 2005 nearly two thousand people died in the U.S. because of Hurricane Katrina. These tragedies and a multitude of others like them have always caused us to ask “Why?” Why did this happen? Why didn’t God stop it? Why did this person survive while that person died?
Asking why is normal, as is being frustrated with not finding an answer that fully resolves our concerns. Did God do it? Was it an act of judgment? Was God willing to stop it but unable to for some reason? Did God see it and simply not care? Is there a god at all? These sorts of questions are ones most of us have asked at one point or another, and they are questions that would have been very familiar to righteous men and women we find in Scripture. David and the psalmists asked these sorts of questions. So did Job and Esther and Elijah and the sisters of Lazarus. I’m sure others did as well.
This morning we’ll look at two stories in Acts 12 that lead me to believe the early church also had cause to wonder why one good man could die and another be delivered when both were serving the same good God. We won’t be able to answer all our questions, but I believe we will be able to see a way forward so that when trouble and confusion comes, we’ll still be able to live for God by faith.
— Patrick Barber