a passage from what Jesus meant

I really, really like this paragraph from the beatitude "Blessed are those who mourn." He had been talking about Christopher Reeve, so the horse doesn't just pop out of nowhere.


"I do not believe it is God's benevolence when we escape suffering any more than it is His malevolence when we don't. God does not spook a horse, inflict one man with AIDS and spare another, is no more responsible for famines in Saharan Africa than for overflowing wheat silos in central Kansas, and did not lead some people into and others out of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Life is arbitrary but God is not. God is not in the business of loading guns, breaking hearts, bankrupting families, dissolving once loving relationships, or destroying homes with a clap of thunder or a rush of rain. No, God does not engineer suffering and loss but rather calls us to redeem it, to die into something.


Amen.