Have you ever wondered how an innocent person locked up is prison must feel? It doesn’t happen often; but human error being what it is, it does happen occasionally. A person is convicted of a crime which he or she did not commit and is sent to prison. There he or she sits, deprived of freedom for days, weeks, sometimes even years, knowing all the while that he or she is not guilty. He or she is an innocent person locked up in jail for a crime he or she did not commit. Probably that person’s toughest battle is the inclination to bitterness, the temptation to believe that there is no justice anywhere in this universe.

Maybe at times we too may ask: Where is Justice? Where is rightness? Where is God?

If and when we have such questions about God and life, the best thing we ought to do is take another look at the life and ministry of Jesus. He is the reassuring Christ.

We all know that we live in a world where there is war and hatred and terrorism and poverty and disease – a world where prophets can be sent to prison and put to death for simply speaking the truth. To such a situation some people may say that there is no God; or if there is a God, He surely does not care. Many people find it difficult to believe in a loving God in a world like ours where there seems to be injustice and human suffering.

Jesus, of course, did not deny the injustice. He simple sought to help balance the books as it were. He pointed out that in this world of suffering there are also many more missions of mercy. It is hard to explain missions of mercy in a world where there is no God who cares.

During World War 1, two British soldiers were looking out across “no-man’s land”, that field of battle between the trenches. The younger man spoke bitterly about the evil madness of it all. He looked at the tangled barbed wire, the shell holes, the broken bodies: and he said, “Captain, where is God?” Just then a medical corpsman went over the top and moved out under fire to bring back a wounded soldier. And the captain said, “Look, son, there He is!! There goes God now.”

Sometimes it may seem that we live in a world gone mad, but if we look again we will find that Jesus is the person “between the trenches” seeking to reveal to us a God who really cares. Jesus needs us to carry Him into the moments of our day. As the old saying puts it: “God has no hands, but yours; God has no feet, but yours”. So God is counting on us to reveal His presence to others by the choices we make every day.

Sometimes we may wonder why God does not put an end to all injustice in this world. The problem is: how can He eliminate all injustice without also eliminating our personal freedom?

This, in a sense, is where God is with us. He both cares for our welfare and respects our freedom. When those two values come into conflict, what can God do?

It may not be a perfect answer, but it does help us to better understand God. God really cares about each and every one of us enough to want the very best for us, and at the same time He believes in us enough to set us free to find it. So please, please choose wisely each day!!