Wherefore Art Thou, God?

I remember the first night when I was sitting in the holding cell at the police station, and I was asking God... Why does David commit adultery and murder, and still get held up as "a man after God's own heart", while I am irretrivably branded as a contemptible sinner? Why does God allow some to have it so easy in life, while I sometimes wonder how much more sport does He intend to make of my life? 

Why do I blame God? Because I have tried so hard, again and again, to stem the pain that drove me into madness. I tried so hard, again and again, to stop doing what I was doing. I prayed, I wept, I repented. Then I sinned again. In the midst of all this, who is the only one who is able to help me? 

God.

Did He?

No.

Like the pharoah whose heart was hardened, I find myself in a similar role. Was he a mere pawn in the bigger narrative of God's plan to save His people? Am I therefore also just a pawn in someone else's story? 

This isn't a new question I've been asking. Amongst the doubts that I've never really found an answer for, one of the big ones was always the need to have a salvation story. Why did God create Adam and Eve, just to put them through the entire saga of humankind sin and suffering? The answer given to me was that this happened because Man was created with free will. And it was this wretched free will that caused some to choose sin, and resulted in separation from God. 

Fine.

But does that mean there is no free will in the new heaven and earth? If there is, why would no one sin after that? And if it was possible for creation to have free will and not sin, why did God not just start with that in the first place? Is it possible that He was merely directing a play for His own entertainment? 

I learnt abt foreshadows in literature. And I learnt that Abraham almost sacrificing Isaac was a foreshadow of God sending His own son as the atonement sacrifice. So does that mean that the whole saga of pharoah's heart being hardened was a foreshadow of God's manipulation across history to direct His own play?

In the continued silence and absence of God, I must continue to await my sentencing. Yet the irony is, I feel like I have already been serving a sentence all this while. I am unable to escape the hands of the Almighty, yet I can only feel like a mere pawn, like the clay that He always admitted He's free to mould and shape as He pleases. And because I am His creation, I can only accept my fate, that I am not one of His favored ones, like David was. 

15 years ago, I first experienced this with Grace. No matter how much I loved her, no matter what I did for her, I ultimately ended up betrayed, as she chose to favor someone else. 

Ironic that I should have mentioned foreshadows.

Today, I see that no matter what I did to serve God, to love Him and to follow Him, I am not among the favored that He chose. So unlike David, I don't have the luxury of sinning yet keeping my life intact.

I may not know how long my incarceration will be when sentencing comes around, but at least I know this: I am already serving a life sentence with God.

It would be better if He had never created me at all in the first place.