Monday QB

This week's message was a natural progression from last week's commentary on God's silence (especially if George read my blog to help him with his prep-LOL): God and Suffering.

Last week I observed that God's silence is often connected with a perception of being abandoned during times of difficulty. Surely, not always, but that is when we notice His distance most profoundly.

Sunday we looked at Psalm 73.

How do we reconcile God's goodness to the evil and suffering we see? Depends on how we see the story.

I see the story as the world, God's creation, was broken, also called The Fall which is where sin entered the world. We chose something over God...security, knowledge, relationship, power...and things were never the same. Still, God loved His creation (us included but all of His creation) and the Bible is the recording of God's pursuit of mending, reconciling, of bringing us back to His dream for us. Since very ancient times, since the beginnings of this break with God, blood was spilt to bring us back into right standing, but it had to be repeated and repeated because we were not capable of staying right and good. So God became man and offered the ultimate sacrifice: Himself in the man of Jesus. He paid the full price so that no more sacrifices are necessary. No more trying to be good. We need only accept and believe and then frolic in His amazing grace. But evil is still there, lurking. What do we do with it?

We grieve with those who mourn. We support those who are frail. We love those who are attacked. When it is our turn to mourn, dependent, or attacked, we needn't ask me but perhaps we should ask, "Why not me?" And we must remember that we have been given the gift of knowing that evil is conquered. Sometimes we will pass thru valleys of darkness and death, but we are not alone-our Father and brothers and sisters are with us.

We needn't be jealous about others success. It is not our path. Isn't it better to do what I was made to do, the work that He prepared for me in advance, before time when He knew my name, than to do futilely do something not my own no matter what the corporal success?

How do you define success? My idea is a feeling of wholeness, of rightness, of pleasing God, of connecting with God. I was meditating on this feeling however and decided it is also how I know there is something wrong here...because I have felt the connection, I am acutely aware of the disconnect when He is silent or when evil invades.

All other success: job, academic, financial...all that is flimsy. It will come and go. Both the people who want to do right and those who chose to obtain it by any means can be successful in those ways. But who can seek God besides those whose hearts desire to find their place in Him? Chose what you like, but I will chose Him.


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