This morning was a rich time in ABF and Worship. Here are some of the thoughts that rumbled around in my mind and heart.
1. Our teacher in ABF has been directing our thinking about prayer by considering the familiar phrases of childhood: please, thank you, I’m sorry, I love you, shhhhhhhhh, and the past two Sundays have been about suffering. Today he referred to the story of Job. He pulled out the section where Job’s wife, out of frustration, told Job to just curse God and die. He skipped over one of my favorite passages and jumped to Job’s rant about wishing he had never been born.
The part he skipped was Job’s response to his wife: shall we take the good and not the bad? It’s such a vital question. As I contemplated this powerful question I was immediately reminded of Asher’s response when he doesn’t get exactly what he wants. He is just the center of our world, and gets or commands all of our attention while he’s awake. And he can pitch one royal fit when things don’t go his way. At this point in his little life everything is a catastrophe and there is little to know ability to accept or understand “the bad.” Many people I know haven’t outgrown this selfish, immature way of thinking.
One of the ways to combat this mentality is to not see loss as loss. What
2. In Pastor’s sermon series he has been addressing different ways that God’s ways don’t always make sense. Today he brought for our consideration the way of the cross: Jesus’ cross and ours. He made reference to the verses where Jesus informs the disciples that if would follow Him they would have to take up their cross. He said something about how we need to hate our life. At the very same time Nelson and I went woo-hoo. No question there are many things about our lives we hate right now. Okay, maybe that’s not what the scripture meant—or Pastor, for that matter, but perhaps it is the seedbed of what we really need to grasp.
For many years, I couldn’t hope for heaven because life here was so good. Not only did I not long for heaven, I didn’t go deeper in my spiritual walk either because I didn’t “feel” a need to. Life has not been easy, or very enjoyable in recent years (except for the addition of grandkids) and I cannot imagine a day where I didn’t depend on God’s strength and grace to get me through. I don’t love my life more than God. I don’t love my things more than God—woo hoo! I think I got it!
3. Pastor went on in his message and discussed “the value of a soul.” Nelson and I must have been on the same wavelink this morning because we both were struck by this one. It seems to us that part of the disinterest that unbelievers have is related to not understanding the value of a soul. How can they be interested or impacted by our passion for their soul? Our culture has been inundated with the immediate and disposable: nothing lasts forever. People buy things that are disposable on purpose because they know they’ll get bored and want to upgrade. People go into marriage (that which used to be to death do us part) already thinking that if it doesn’t work we can always just divorce. People use to live in the same house or at least town their entire lives—there just isn’t any sense of permanence. So the image of living forever, singing around a throne just doesn’t have any appeal. The mentality is much more: eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.
4. And finally, Pastor’s sermon title was the question: Are you kidding? That’s the question we throw at God when He asks us to do stuff that doesn’t make sense. Pastor referred to Moses at the burning bush. Moses. How could God use this murdering coward who spent 40 years as a fugitive in another country? That’s the question others ask. I ask it differently: could God really use Moses after he wasted so much of his life, with a horrible past that others would cringe at and judge? Please God use Moses. Please God use me.
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