When God’s Plan Meets Human Cruelty

A Lament for a Broken World

“O Lord, how long?”
This is not a question asked by unbelievers.
It is the cry of Scripture itself.

When we hear that God has an “eternal purpose carried out in Christ,” and then look at history—
the Trail of Tears,
slavery,
the Holocaust,
and the daily suffering still unfolding across our world—
our hearts recoil.

If God has a plan, why do the innocent die?
Why do rulers grow powerful on cruelty?
Why do children pay the price for the sins of empires?

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A Prayer That Refuses to Look Away

God,
we do not come to You with easy answers.
We come with names, faces, graves, and tears.

We come remembering the Indigenous peoples driven from their land,
their cries swallowed by policy and profit.

We come remembering bodies chained, sold, beaten, and dehumanized,
while Scripture was twisted to bless the whip.

We come remembering smoke rising from camps,
numbers tattooed on arms,
silence where families once laughed.

We come remembering today—
bombs, prisons, borders, hunger, fear,
and leaders who sleep soundly while others do not wake.

How long, O Lord?
How long will the wicked prosper?
How long will the innocent suffer?

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God’s Purpose Is Not the World As It Is

Your Word tells us, God, that Your purpose is eternal—
but history tells us the world is still broken.

Jesus taught us to pray, “Your kingdom come,”
because Your will is not yet done on earth as it is in heaven.

So we name this truth aloud:
genocide is not Your will,
slavery is not Your design,
cruelty is not Your plan.

These are not mysteries to be explained away.
They are evils to be opposed.

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You Did Not Watch From a Distance

And still, O God,
You did not stand safely above the suffering.

You entered it.

You became a refugee, hunted by a king.
You lived under occupation.
You were arrested by religion and executed by empire.
You died an innocent death at the hands of power.

The cross tells us where You stand.
Not with the rulers.
Not with the justifiers of violence.
But with the broken, the crushed, the discarded.

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A Hope Born in Protest

Resurrection did not erase the wounds.
The risen Christ still bore the scars.

And so our hope is not denial.
It is defiance.

We believe—
not that evil makes sense,
but that evil will be judged.
Not that suffering is meaningful,
but that it will not be final.

If there were no justice beyond history,
then the suffering of the innocent would be meaningless.
But You are the Judge of all the earth,
and You will do what is right.

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Teach Us How to Live Between the Cross and the Kingdom

Until Your kingdom fully comes,
teach us how to live faithfully in the waiting.

Teach us to lament without losing faith.
Teach us to resist without becoming cruel.
Teach us to remember the victims,
not rewrite the story to comfort ourselves.

Make us a people who stand where You stand—
with the oppressed,
against injustice,
for dignity, mercy, and truth.

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A Closing Prayer

God of the wounded and the waiting,
hold the dead in Your mercy
and the living in Your care.

Give rest to those who suffered injustice.
Give courage to those who resist it now.
Give us hearts that break
for what breaks Yours.

We place our hope not in rulers,
not in nations,
not in history itself—
but in You,
the God who was crucified
and who lives.

Amen.

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Lament is not the opposite of faith.
It is faith that refuses to lie about the world
while still daring to hope in God.