“But, John,” I said quietly, “isn’t that just what you have accused God of doing when you said it was his will? Call your little boy’s death the result of mass ignorance, call it mass folly, call it mass sin, if you like, call it bad drains or communal carelessness, but don’t call it the will of God.” Surely we cannot identify as the will of God something for which a man would be locked up in jail, or put in a criminal lunatic asylum. ~ Leslie Weatherhead, The Will of God (pp. 12-13).

God is love, not vengeance —
especially against innocents,
just because of kinship or relationship
with others to “learn a lesson.”
God’s reasoning scoffs at the mother
who wants the child next to hers swatted
so he’ll get the message, he – her child…
God loves and even when we understand
not at all he has acted in love,
consistent with established rules
but seen through the whole lens
and not the skewed vision of those hurt,
bereaved, feeling cheated. God doesn’t cheat
nor break the rules – his own rules —
when it would make him a wishy-washy God.