About three months ago, we started a new family rhythm. Every morning, after we finish our personal Bible reading, we gather to share what we read. It’s not a deeply spiritual time with gracious words of truth flowing from the mouths of babes and infants. Usually, it’s more of a rowdy free-for-all, where no one is able to complete a sentence without someone else interrupting, and soft-spoken Mom struggles even to be heard over the noise of the six brothers. And if, against all odds, a good discussion does manage to get started, one of the teens is likely to roll his eyes and moan, “How much longer are we going to be?? Can’t we just finish already?”
But by stubbornly insisting that we all show up every day, week after week, I’m already seeing encouraging fruit. Our discussions are wide-ranging, since we’re not all following the same reading plan. Today we were in Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, 2 Samuel, Psalms, Proverbs, and Matthew. It’s super fun to expand on the kids’ summaries to show how the sections they read fit into the overall story of the Bible, and now they are starting to make connections themselves.
The benefits extend beyond our morning discussions. Recently, my 17-year-old son and I got into a deep conversation about evil, justice, and the frustration we feel when it seems God isn’t judging wickedness the way we see in the Bible. Primed by our daily jaunts through the entirety of Scripture, we followed these themes from Genesis to Revelation and into our modern era. In light of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, this is a deeply personal question for us.
In the end, we were profoundly encouraged to realize God hasn’t changed. Though it might seem like God was always judging evil in the Bible, drastic divine intervention to curb human cruelty has never been an everyday occurrence. The few righteous people living through the sixteen centuries before the Flood probably wondered if God was ever going to act. The children of Israel suffered for a century under genocidal oppression in Egypt before God sent ten dramatic plagues to force Pharaoh to let them go.
God says, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.”
These waiting times were soul-crushing. People living through them felt hopeless. But God always stepped in, and from our vantage point, the final judgment takes center stage. We don’t consider how it felt to plead with God for decades or centuries.
That conversation with my son reminded me that we are living in one of these waiting times. I shared with him some of the prophecies from the book of Revelation, and he was heartened to think that God will put an end to the injustice and cruelty in the world on an even grander scale than when he dealt with the evil Egyptian oppressors. Though we don’t see judgment yet, God has not changed. He has always given humanity lengthy grace periods before he steps in to alter the course of history.
God says, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” I love that. I don’t need to make anyone pay. That’s a burden too heavy for any human. It’ll twist you and break you. But God sees everything, and he will repay. Hanging onto that hope is the only way I can bear the injustice of this world.
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Unlike the United States, Ukraine does not have many dark-skinned people, or Asians, for that matter. It's a fairly homogenous white society, which means that anyone of non-European descent stands out and might be exposed to ridicule, or worse. However, although I'm half Japanese, I've been fortunate.