“What have you done with my Lord?”

These are the words that Mary used when she entered the tomb of Jesus and found it empty. These are the same words we can use when we see all that is happening in the world around us. Every day there is more violence around us whether it is terrorists acts, domestic violence or random shootings. Each time we ask the same question: Where is God through all of this?

Like Mary, we seem to wonder where Jesus has gone. We can also use the same quote as Jesus when he said from the cross “My God, Why have you forsaken me?” The thing is God has not forsaken us, He hasn’t left us, no one has taken Him. Rather, we have pushed Him out of our lives, certainly our public lives, and for many of us our private lives as well.

But God isn’t gone, He is still here and still active, we just choose not to see Him. We have surrounded ourselves with so much noise we can’t hear when He speaks to us. And it is our choice. God gave us free will and it is up to use it. We can choose right or we can choose wrong. We can choose good or we can choose evil. We can choose to listen or we can choose to ignore.God doesn’t force us to do anything, but He is always there, watching over us, and if we choose to embrace Him, He will protect us and guide us.

Life really is all about choices. It is also about accepting responsibility for the consequences of these choices. For example we can choose to give into temptation  or resist it. The consequences of giving into temptation is to spend eternity in Hell. The consequences of resisting is spending it in Heaven. Now you may not believe in Heaven or Hell, and I am not going to try to convince you otherwise. But the way I look at it is this:

I would rather not sin and find out that there is not Heaven than sin and find out there is. At least that way I would still have lived a good life.

Now I am the first to admit I have not always believed this, mostly because I never gave it much thought, but now that I have, well I know which way I want to go. Unfortunately for all of us too many people take the opposite approach and take the chance that Heaven and Hell don’t exist. This affects the rest of us as we all have to live with the consequences of their choices.

But then, I guess I can use another quote from Jesus’ Crucifixion:

Forgive them Father for they know not what they do.