I used to ponder more on the question of why a loving God or universe whose arc was supposedly bent to the light would allow so much evil to exist.  I don’t really spend that much time on that question anymore.  My time is better off watching The Crown or Taco Chronicles on Netflix.

My prosecutor mentor, whose father was a Lutheran pastor, once told me that he either no longer believed in God or was ambivalent of a loving one because of all the cases he worked on.  He once told me the facts of his worst one (it was bad), but strangely (at least in my opinion), it falls short of mine.  Yet, when he was narrating his wife’s last days, he is quoting Scripture to me.  On my end, I don’t think what I saw shook my faith much.  It was actually other experiences that did.  But that’s for another time.

There is this pretty famous Christian-inspired poem / story titled “Footprints in the Sand.”  You could find it engraved on all sorts of items in the Christian bookstore.  In the poem / story, a man and God are walking on a beach representing the man’s life.  The man remarks to God that during the rougher / darker moments, there was only one set of footprints.  The man accuses God of abandoning him,  God replies “That’s when I carried you.”

My interpretation is different.  In my version, God replies “I did leave you alone, so you could learn to be strong.”  A friend asked me how Nelson Mandela became so strong.  I said that’s easy, he practiced.  Men like him don’t stand up or resist because they are strong.  It’s also the other way around.  They are strong because they stood up and resisted.

No need for a history lesson here, it’s true of many of the great people who’ve lived.