Divine intervention

As I think about how I would talk about God with someone, I realized the focus is really divine intervention. One of my earliest memories is as a child in the church, I wondered  about the people that lived before Jesus. They couldn't believe in Jesus and be saved so what happened to them? 

As an adult I have grown to dislike the saying, "there but for the grace of God go I." So God lets bad things happen to other people but at least God protects me, really? Picture a stream flowing by that represents people who have cancer, God stands on the bank and occasionally pulls people out but most people float on by. So I've never understood if God is all powerful why all these things happen. I have never found the explanations satisfactory. (See post on Theodicy, (from Greek theos, “god”; dikē, “justice”), explanation of why a perfectly good, almighty, and all-knowing God permits evil.)

I realize lots of people find comfort in this but I don't think it is ever comforted me. Since becoming a inquiring student of Buddhism, I realize the Buddhist teachings do impact me in the ways that a lot of people say their Christian faith does. They help me understand the world and how I should live.