'All Creation is Groaning'

Scientists tell us that the creation of our universe began with a big bang. Everything we see now on a clear night, including the earth we inhabit and its stars, the sun and our single moon was cast outward into motion and continues to expand. And telescopes put into space tell us that there is so much more to be seen. Yet none of this stars, planets, moons, water, vegetation, fish, animals and finally human beings can have caused itself. We are here because God wished that, besides himself, there be a created universe. God is love, and love always wants to create and give.  

Why, then, we ask ourselves, did God who is love, create us to suffer pandemics of disease caused by viruses like the coronavirus? Well, creation, if you notice, is not God, not perfect, not always existing, but rather, growing toward life through earthquakes, and sunamies, hurricanes and fires and the mutations of living creatures large and very small like viruses. This is the price of creaturehood. It is frail and incomplete, growing, advancing, but also at times self-destructive. 

Being creatures we are frail, but God loves us in our frailty. The Bible says he created us in his own image and likeness. Is there anything more beautiful and spiritual than the smile of a baby? Yet, only two generations ago from me, my grandmother gave birth to 12 children but was able to raise only eight, four dying in childbirth. That was not unusual then. It was then the price of having a family. Even in these days of modern medicine, life is a mixture of joy and sorrow, tears and laughter. However, would it have been better if God had made us unfeeling, without joy, unhurtable?