Where is God in all this world mess - is it for us to fix it?

Exmouth Community Food Larder manager Anthony Bernard. (Image: Archant)

Dear God - are you there? Many believers are wondering where is God in all this world chaos; unbelievers are hoping the spirits of Planet Earth will prevail.

Prompted by a film about the battle of Midway, I revisited a book on Japan's Pacific invasion in the second world war.

A summary of the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway started "it was as though the Japanese Sun Goddess Amaterasu sat down with the Statue of Liberty for a game of dice".

The chronicle of errors and opportunities concluded with a small American force sinking the aircraft carriers of the overwhelming Japanese fleet, leaving the Japanese attempt to dominate the Pacific in ruins.

A direct intervention seems rare, but God may skew the odds when chance arises and we, the people, are failing in our mission to make the world a better place!! In fact modern science is full of probabilities, from virus mutations to quantum mechanics.

The war in the Ukraine is certainly full of chances, so my hope and belief is that sensible values will eventually prevail and that autocratic dictatorships will fail.

For unbelievers it is simpler - just the need for people to work with each other for the good of all - maybe that is the Christian message anyway, but also the central message of most sincere beliefs.

But there are times when we need to believe in someone to limit power crazed autocrats.

To repeat a quotation "All power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely" but in the end we are all human.

I went to sleep worrying about this, and dreamt that Putin came to a bad end at the hand of a mistress who found him with the wrong rival - we are all human.

Russian Easter celebrations showed Putin in church. To quote: "Are not those hands stained with blood? Spare me the sight of your wickedness … do good, righting wrongs, protecting widows and orphans".

Isaiah chapter one continues: "think you it is a welcome sound, the tramp of your feet bringing worship such as yours?" Hopefully, most of us are doing enough good, looking after widows and orphans, donating to foodbanks and the needy all around the world.

Ordinary Russians are also needy, with 15,000 of them killed and 7,000 missing in the fighting, yet unaware of the truth. Some Russians in England are being harassed, contrary to the traditional friendship between Ukrainians and Russians; some are unable to receive money from family in Devon but cannot discuss the situation because of strict controls.

This started "Dear God, are you there?" hoping it would lead to positive thoughts, but there is nothing uplifting currently. Maybe our freedom to complain about partygate is more important than partygate itself.

A man I knew in Kerala, working in high technology, could have earned a huge salary in the USA.

He explained that his role was to use his skill to help his own people in southern India.

It is the many thousands, maybe millions, like him, working locally to benefit those immediately around that give hope. We may describe this as Christian; he would use Hindu terms.

We are all under the banner "One Creator, One Planet, One Family", a slogan borrowed from Moslem New Yorkers running a foodbank!

Maybe God's Heavenly Host fills all the roles of world religions, expecting us people to support the needy and fix the problems with the skills we have been given.