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Anything that’s wrong with the world is an opportunity to pray for restoration. It’s a prayer for healing from cancer. A prayer to save a marriage on the brink of divorce. A prayer for a vaccine. A prayer for anxious thoughts to end. A prayer for revival. A prayer for relief from unrelenting depression. A prayer for God to remove same sex attraction. A prayer for financial provision. A prayer to withstand temptation. A prayer for employment. A prayer for the unborn to be cherished. A prayer for the evils of abortion to be judged. A prayer for freedom from addiction. A prayer for deliverance for those caught in sex trafficking. A prayer for the homeless. A prayer for riots and looting to end. A prayer for protests to be heard. A prayer for injustices to be remedied. A prayer for change.

But if God is merciful, why does He allow so much evil and pain in the first place? 

Some people doubt the existence of God because there’s so much bad in the world. We tell ourselves, “If God was really there and really merciful, He’d eliminate all the evil and hatred in our world.” In order to answer that question, we need to look closer. We need to understand why the world is broken.

The Bible is clear that everything broken on this planet—from riots and racism to cancer and coronavirus—is rooted in our broken relationship with God. The world is broken because we are here. Here’s the problem in a nutshell: for God to eliminate the evil in the world He’d have to eliminate me. He’d have to eliminate you. It’s God’s mercy that stays His hand. 

To paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards restoration.” Don’t stop lamenting, because God will restore in the end. Don’t stop praying, because God does respond to our prayers of lament now. Don't stop telling sinners the Good News of the Gospel, because God is calling unbelievers to Himself.