Why, if God has all authority and power, does he sometimes let evil oppress his people, or let them be surrounded by darkness, rather than just driving it away immediately?
Many answers could be given to show the goodness and wisdom of God in his dealings, but one thing has really stuck out to me lately. God desires to show forth his strength against his enemies. Sometimes he lets it get bad before he breaks through with his saving power.
Ps. 59:11
Do not slay them, or my people will forget;
Scatter them by Your power, and bring them down,
O Lord,our shield.
Ps. 68:1
Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered,
And let those who hate Him flee before Him.
Ps. 68:14
When the Almighty scattered the kings there,
It was snowing in Zalmon.
It's as if God sometimes let's the enemies pile up and get strong so he can break them in a powerful way, all in a moment. A small experience in my back yard reminded me of this recently.
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The other day I was sitting out on my back patio quietly drinking coffee. I had some unexpected time, so I thought that I would just sit out back and enjoy nature for a bit. Aren't those times good? The air was quite cool, but the coffee was warm. The sun had only been up a little while, and there was an occasional bird or two flying by or landing somewhere next to me in the back yard. At this point everything was basically like I expected.
However, in a matter of minutes the birds started to multiply, and they were grackles. For all you non-bird people, this is a grackle:
Now, understand, grackles are probably one of my favorite unliked birds. That is, I enjoy disliking them. The males are dark and especially ugly, even noisy, and usually group up in little gangs of 10 or 12. In dino terms, if a crow is an Allosaurus, then grackles are raptors. They also have evil white looking eyes (for some reason when black birds have white eyes it looks evil). So they begin to multiply, with another two or three added about every 10 seconds. They are swarming the bird feeder and the ground below. All this is going on about 25 feet away from my bench. The birds seem to ignore me. The multiplication continues. Pretty soon it's getting ridiculous. There are probably about 40 or 50 grackles convened (and I have a small backyard mind you). They're all squawking and carrying on, fighting with one another competing for food, making tons of noise. It was like Abraham being pestered by the birds when trying to make a sacrifice. I thought, "That's it. That's enough." I quietly set down my coffee cup making as little of a stir as possible.
In the blink of an eye I made my move. I jumped from the bench to my feet in the direction of the birds and while still in midair I made the loudest clap possible with my hands. Think the grackles ignored me? Not a chance. At my thunder clap they all simultaneously scattered into to the air and fled for their lives. Did I feel good? Are you kidding?! I was filled with glee. I felt powerful (sad, I know)!
And right away I thought, "Man, it must be like that for God."
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Oh God, Scatter your enemies.
Readers and friends, don't ever give up on looking to God to break through the impossible adamant strongholds of sin and Satan. He is the God of peace who will soon crush Satan underneath our feet. And not just his feet, but our feet.
(As as footnote, I have found that many Psalms with their cries for destruction and imprecation toward the wicked rightly find fulfillment in God's destruction of our invisible and non-fleshly enemies, namely Satan and demons...)
