God if a good Father, a patient Father, the best father, and he abounds in love for his creation. Some see God as being unable to deal with all the evil on earth, or merely indifferent to the suffering caused by it. But nothing could be further from the truth. If we stop and remember the best times in our lives, this is God. If we ponder on the best memories or revel in the present because it is our best, this is our loving Father. All the purest, simplest, kindest, and most innocent times in our life—this is God in our lives. Think of it this way: God is the loving director of his own great epic.

Throughout time, God has been making the props for this eternity-winning epic. He cared enough to put the Greeks in power four hundred years before the coming of his Son to allow a common language to be created that would be spoken throughout the world. Then he put the Romans in power to give the world a system of law and order as well as a transportation and communication system to spread the truth of the Gospel. Throughout it all, God was running the show, but through his love he also gave us the power to decide where our lives would go and to what end. Basically, he created the actors but does not control them. This by itself shows the character of God.

Thus we need to stop blaming God for the unfortunate times and happenings in our lives. In our selfish, evil-motivated lives we want God to remove his hands from our lives, yet when the bad things happen, we cry out, "If you exist, why don’t you protect me?" Many die every day in the creations man has made. God said at The Tower of Babel, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them" (Genesis 11:6).

This passage shows that God knew that, through the manipulation of Satan, we would create many things in this world that would end up destroying us. In his infinite and loving knowledge, God also knew that we would never stop to think, "We can build it . . . but should we?" So we need to stop telling God he doesn’t love us or doesn’t exist when we see good people dying in their own creations.

We need to ask ourselves, did God give us wings to fly? Did he give us gills instead of lungs? Didn’t the Lord give us feet instead of wheels? In other words, God has always known that if we fly at supersonic speed some will die. If we drive at high speeds some will die. If we float our boats on the ocean, some will drown or become prey to its beasts. If we create metal, some will be cut by it. To my way of thinking, the love of my personal God is beyond compare, because he knows these things but still allows me to make my own life choices. God has always known what is best for us and he always will because he created us and he loves us.

The love God gives us, coupled with the same capacity he created within us, is the greatest gift of all, but our loving Father has also bestowed many other gifts on his creation, and you’ll learn about them in Chapter 9 of my book.

An excerpt from FIND HAPPINESS! How to Fill the VOID in Your Life by LOOKING, FEELING, and LIVING BETTER! by Shawn Smith (Knight for Christ Publishing, 2007). Copyright © 2007 by Shawn Smith.