Have you ever heard these words?

"I Dare You!"

Well I have, and chances are you have too. Children use them to challenge each other. Adults sometimes use them to try and prove they are right. To 'dare' someone is to challenge them to do or say something 'risky'.

It takes great courage to act on a dare. Maybe someone dared you to jump off a cliff as a teenager, or to race in a car going 80 miles an hour. Maybe you were dared to do something embarrassing or even foolish to be part of a club. Or how about facing your own fears and doing something really scary, like flying to see a relative when you have a fear of flying. Whatever it is, was, for any of us, to act on a dare still takes 'Courage'.

With that thought in the forefront of your mind, have you or someone you know ever asked these questions?

"Why does God allow evil if he hates evil, and why did He create evil in the first place?"

Dare yourself if you will to think for a moment what God said about these questions.

What shall we say then? Is there injustice with God? Certainly not! For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whomever I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I have compassion.” So then God’s choice is not dependent on human will, nor on human effort [the totality of human striving], but on God who shows mercy [to whomever He chooses—it is His sovereign gift]. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “I raised you up for this very purpose, to display My power in [dealing with] you, and so that My name would be proclaimed in all the earth.” So then, He has mercy on whom He wills (chooses), and He hardens [the heart of] whom He wills.

You will say to me then, “Why does He still blame me [for sinning]? For who [including myself] has [ever] resisted His will and purpose?” On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers [arrogantly] back to God and dares to defy Him? Will the thing which is formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?” Does the potter not have the right over the clay, to make from the same lump [of clay] one object for honorable use [something beautiful or distinctive] and another for common use [something ordinary or menial]? What if God, although willing to show His [terrible] wrath and to make His power known, has tolerated with great patience the objects of His wrath [which are] prepared for destruction? And what if He has done so to make known the riches of His glory to the objects of His mercy, which He has prepared beforehand for glory, including us, whom He also called, not only from among the Jews, but also from among the Gentiles? Just as He says in [the writings of the prophet] Hosea:

“I will call those who were not My people, ‘My people,’ And [I will call] her who was not beloved, ‘beloved.’” “And it shall be that in the place where it was said to them, ‘you are not My people,’ There they shall be called sons of the living God.”

Romans 9:14-26 Amplified

It's amazing to me in the highlighted portion of scripture above that God would show His 'PURE LOVE' to us in the midst of evil, that is love. First, we are only the creation, not the creator. We can not understand how life began, nor why good and evil exist nor how they began. We can however have the courage to believe in a creator who knows best, and to confidently rest these questions in His care.

I for myself am grateful that He,

would take the time to explain this much to me,

that I would see clearly 'HIS PURE LOVE'

through the existence of evil and a Sovereign God above.

- Terri Lynne Corbett

On a journey of Healing and Hope with you,

Terri Lynne