Sermon Illustrations on Why

Anger Towards God

Psalms 22

God is not guilty of sin, but we still feel anger toward him.

A. Why we get angry.

1. They blame Him for all human tragedy.

(Jewish tailor asks God to forgive his little sins of cheating on

cloth, and he will forgive God for his big sins of letting babies

die.)

2. They resent Him for not allowing a loved one to live.

3. They are angry with Him for creating them with flaws.

(Author is a stuttering preacher.)

B. To reconcile with God.

C. Breaking down the barriers.

1. The barrier of silence. (Psalm 22)

2. The barrier of resentment.

3. The barrier of forgetfulness.

D. Do you choose bitterness or trust?

Bitterness - old man in nursing home has cancer and wants to die.

Has no use for God because his mother got ill once.

Trust - couple with daughter with cerebral palsy has baby boy who dies.

They choose to have peace with God. Through daughter they have a

ministry with other parents. (as told by Ann Kiemel.)

[Followed by spiritual questionnaire on whether we harbor resentment toward God and a prayer to release it.]

William Poteet wrote in "The Pentecostal Minister" how in 1903 the Russian Czar noticed a sentry posted for no apparent reason on the Kremlin grounds. Upon inquiry, he discovered that in 1776 Catherine the Great found there the first flower of spring. "Post a sentry here," she commanded, "so that no one

tramples that flower under foot!"

Some traditions die hard.

No Way Out?

Bragan was unfairly convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to 99 years. He finds the story of Joseph in pharaoh's prison to be meaningful. Joseph's faith freed him in the midst of painful circumstances because he knew by faith that God held his future securely in His hands.

1. You are free to accept your circumstances.

Pastor tells hurting woman who complained to him, "What's so special

about you that you thought you'd get through life without any real

suffering?" Nobody is exempt from pain. [not used]

2. You are free to choose your response.

A major-league baseball umpire had a reputation for taking his time

when calling a pitch behind the plate. Seconds would drag on before

he bellowed, "Ball!" or "Strike!"

One day as the delays got long, the manager of a losing team

finally exploded. Livid, he stormed up out of the dugout, screaming,

"Are you blind? What is it?"

The umpire stood up and glared at the furious manager. "It ain't

nothing until I call it something!" he roared. [not used]

3. You are free to act.

Bragan studied for a college degree in prison.

4. You are free to love.

A Christian construction contractor was almost wiped out by an

embezzling employee. He prosecuted, but gave aid to his family,

visited him prison, and found him a job upon release. Others thought

he was nuts, but he said, "I knew God had given me loving grace and

forgiveness for my sins. But here I was harboring hatred and

vengeance for a man who sinned against me. I was trapped in a worse

prison than my ex-employee."

Yet I Will Rejoice In the Lord

Job 42

Minor Prophets series. Habakkuk and all-powerful God vs. caring God.

1. Habakkuk is obscure yet important.

2. Prophet is angry at injustice.

a. God will punish Israel with Babylonians.

b. Prophet feels this would be even more unjust.

3. How people get angry with God.

a. Rabbi Kushner and "When Bad Things Happen to Good People."

b. Dilemma of book of Job.

4. God's answer.

a. Judgment is selective.

b. Instruments of judgment will be judged in turn.

c. God is still in charge.

d. Faith is required by us.

5. Habakkuk doesn't get to see fulfillment.

a. Yet he had peace anyway.

1> Many require their faith to "work" or they abandon it.

b. With salvation we can always rejoice in God.

c. We can learn deeper faith through hard times.

The Coincidence Gave Him the Will To Live

Mark 12

When Jewish psychiatrist Victor Frankl was arrested by the Nazis in World War II, he was stripped of everything - property, family, possessions. He had spent years researching and writing a book on the importance of finding meaning in life - concepts that later would be known as logotherapy. When he arrived in Auschwitz, the infamous death camp, even his manuscript, which he had hidden in the lining of his coat, was taken away.

"I had to undergo and overcome the loss of my spiritual child," Frankl wrote. "Now it seemed as if nothing and no one would survive me; neither a physical nor a spiritual child of my own! I found myself confronted with the question of whether under such circumstances my life was ultimately void of any meaning."

He was still wrestling with that question a few days later when the Nazis forced the prisoners to give up their clothes.

"I had to surrender my clothes and in turn inherited the worn-out rags of an inmate who had been sent to the gas chamber," said Frankl. "Instead of the many pages of my manuscript, I found in the pocket of the newly acquired coat a single page torn out of a Hebrew prayer book, which contained the main Jewish prayer, Shema Yisrael (Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one God. And you shall love the Lord our God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might).

"How should I have interpreted such a 'coincidence' other than as a challenge to live my thoughts instead of merely putting them on paper?"

Later, as Frankl reflected on his ordeal, he wrote in his book "Man's Search for Meaning," "There is nothing in the world that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions, as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life... 'He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.'"

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[Version used 3/22/98, from Rick Warren, "Philippians 2:12 - God's Part/My Part in Changing Me"]

Victor Frankl, the famous psychologist, was imprisoned in a concentration camp in World War II. He said one day they had stripped him naked, taken his clothes, shoes, family, his wedding ring. He said they had taken away everything physically that they could. But standing there in front of the Nazi soldiers he realized there was one thing that could never be taken from him. That was his choice to respond to the circumstances he experienced in life. This is ultimate freedom.

You cannot choose what is going to happen to you next week, next month, next year. You don’t have that choice. But you can choose how you’re going to respond, how you’re going to react. -- whether it’s going to make you or break you, whether you’re going to be bitter or better, whether it’s going to be a stepping stone to maturity or a stumbling block to failure.

What really matters in life the most is not what happens to you. What happens IN you is what matters most. That is a choice. We’ve all seen people put in the same bad circumstances. One will come out a winner and the other will come out a whiner.

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Version in sermon of September 9, 1984, on Philippians 4:10-13.

Whenever I think of horrible circumstances, the Nazi concentration camps in World War II come to mind. In those camps Hitler murdered more than 6 million people, mostly Jews. They weren’t just killed outright. Many of them starved to death, or were so weak they died from common illnesses. One of the few survivors was a psychologist named Victor Frankl.

After the war he wrote a book called, “Man’s Search for Meaning.” In one passage he says:

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last pieces of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing - - the last of human freedoms - to choose your attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose your own way.”

(Viktor Frankl, Man's Search For Meaning, p. 104).

"The Weaver"

Job 3:23

Poem entitled, "The Weaver" :

My life is but a weaving between my Lord and me,

I cannot choose the colors; He worketh steadily.

Oftimes He weaveth sorrow, and in my foolish pride

Forget He sees the upper and I, the underside.

Not till the loom is silent and the shuttles cease to fly

Shall God unroll the canvas and explain the reason why.

The dark threads are as needful in the Weaver's skillful hand,

As the threads of gold and silver in the pattern He has planned.

Prepare For A Change

Ezra 7:6

Learn how to put together a lesson that will have an impact on lives.

1. Start with a simple main point. (Don't use a shotgun approach)

2. Choose lesson aims.

3. Choose methods that fulfill aims.

a. Warm-up.

b. Bible study and interpretation.

c. Application.

4. The first and last component - caring for your individual students.

Sidebar article: Asking Good Questions

Four kinds of questions:

1. Warm-up questions.

2. Information questions.

3. Clarifying questions.

4. Application questions.

It is important to ask, "Why?" And we should not be afraid of silence after asking our question. Ask students to report on progress, not just "dirt."

[Another sidebar article is a self-"report card" for Christian teachers.]

38 Ways To Wake Up Your Class

Ezra 7:6

Here are 38 simple, practical, and creative ideas guaranteed to bring new life into your group or class. Variety is important.

Associated Baptist Press

Jeremiah 7:9

The United States of America is "morally bankrupt" because it has followed a "liberal philosophy" that asks "what" instead of "why," Texas pastor O.S. Hawkins said at a national seminar March 4.

"The United States is morally bankrupt in large part because we have been led by a liberal philosophy that has made false assumptions about two particular things: the nature of the universe and the nature of mankind," said Hawkins, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas.

Hawkins spoke at the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission's 29th annual national seminar, titled "Christians in the Public Square: Faith in Practice?" held March 4-6 in Washington.

"Liberal philosophy seldom asks why, it only asks what," Hawkins said.

For that reason, America seeks to clean up problems like drug abuse and AIDS rather than to analyze the root causes of social problems, he said.

"What would happen if the president of the United States would stand up before the American people and stop asking what and begin to ask why?" he said.

Hawkins drew a list of "why" questions from the Old Testament book of Jeremiah, where God asks ancient Judah: "Why has this people slidden back? Why do we sit still? Why have they provoked me to anger? Why is there no recovery?"

Hawkins dated America's moral decline to the Supreme Court's 1963 ruling forbidding prayer in public schools, noting that the last 30 years have been marked by trouble for children and schools.

He also complained that religious appeals increasingly are ignored in seats of power.

"Speak of the judgment of God in this city and you'll be scoffed at and laughed out of town," Hawkins said. "We've rejected the word of the Lord for men's liberal agenda and we wonder why people have slidden back."

Hawkins took regular jabs at President Bill Clinton during his address.

He first criticized Clinton for defending last year's United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, as "true blue to families" while the conference discussed lesbianism and featured a prayer to "Mother Earth."

"And the leader of the free world says it was true blue to families," Hawkins said. "Why has this people slidden back?"

Later, he alluded to Clinton again after stating, "America's biggest problem is an apathetic church that has lost its first love and thus its influence."

"When I see political leaders with their liberal agendas contrary to the Word of God coming out of church on Sunday being photographed with Bibles in their hands and waving to the television cameras, the words of Jeremiah 7:9-10 echo in my mind," he said. "Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal and walk after other gods whom you do not know and then come and stand before me in the house that is called by my name and say 'we are delivered to do all these abominations?'"

He targeted Clinton again, making a point that, "It is one thing to be immoral, but another to encourage a moral decline in the land."

"We have had presidents of the United States in the past who have been known for immoral acts. But it is quite another thing to encourage immorality through people and policies," he said.

"A leader encourages moral decline in the land when he takes a pen in hand and signs an executive order permitting the bodies of aborted babies to be used in research. A leader encourages a moral decline in the land when he appoints an AIDS czar who quickly says America is 'a repressed Victorian society' and tells the populace, including teenagers, to seek pleasure in sex."

While criticizing liberals and politicians, Hawkins said the church bears the most blame for increasing secularization in culture.

"Don't blame the politicians for a moral collapse. It belongs at the feet of the church," he said.

"We have a generation in America that does not know Christ primarily because we have not made him known," Hawkins said.

Even Christians have bought into values of the liberal philosophy, Hawkins said.

"Many Americans have bought into the liberal lies, media manipulation and public propaganda, while the church sits by with a false confidence based on lying words," Hawkins said.

"Don't listen to those who say religious principles played little part in the founding of the United States," Hawkins said. "Don't listen to those who say that we basically were not built on a Judeo-Christian philosophy but on more of a pluralistic deistic philosophy.

"Forever etched in the charters of the 13 original colonies is the gospel truth," he said, quoting charters of early states. According to their charters, Maryland was "formed by a pious zeal to extend the Christian gospel," Delaware was "formed for the further propagation of the holy gospel" and Connecticut to "preserve the purity of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ," Hawkins said.

#4135

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Asking 'Why?' Amid the Destruction

Job 42

The devastation and destruction that recently [2003] ravaged Jackson, Tennessee, left most people with lingering questions about the nature of life on earth and God in heaven.

Driving through downtown, walking among those who survived the storms, or simply looking at the pictures in the newspaper or on television causes uncomfortable questions to flood our minds. Downed power lines, destroyed homes, century-old trees snapped into pieces and funeral homes filled with families and friends are images that are almost more graphic than we can bear. Without a doubt, the deepest and most profound question which each of us continues to ask -- at least if to no one but ourselves -- is the piercing and haunting one-word question, “Why?”

After the trauma of an earlier tornado in Jackson, in 1999, why this? Why now? After the tornado touching down on one of our university campuses last fall, why again? Why so soon? What Jackson has experienced has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Why then have we experienced this three times in just the past four years? Why?

Merely experiencing life is not enough for those who are a part of the human race. All people desire to know the reasons and motivations behind life's occurrences.

Scientists who observe physical realities seek to understand the nature of such realities as they really are. Sociologists observe different people and groups of people but also evaluate the reasons behind the existence of such cultures. Teachers are motivated not merely by the content which they teach to children but by an understanding of why such an education is important and indeed essential. The question “why?” motivates not just the philosopher, but the businessman, the doctor, the clergy, the social worker and indeed all who live with any semblance of intentionality. Regardless of our profession or socioeconomic status, each of us at our core is a philosopher. We all ask why.

Sitting in church pews during my adolescent years often positioned me perfectly to hear well-intentioned and faithful preachers say that Christians should never question God by asking him why. They said such an approach implies presumption, lack of faith and distrust in God.

However, nothing could be further from the truth. God is not scared of humanity's authentic questioning. He is not offended by our genuine concerns or our honest lack of understanding in the face of life's difficulties and tragedies. In fact, real questions on our part reveal an element of trust -- a trust that, at the very least, acknowledges that while we ultimately will never know why, God always does. Asking why does imply faith -- a faith that God indeed does know why, whether we do or not.

It is OK to ask why. Even Jesus Christ, God's own Son, in the middle of horrendous despair and death cried from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Surely if Jesus who lived a perfect life before his heavenly Father felt the liberty to look Him in the face and ask why, then we can too.

No, this side of heaven we will never know the whys behind the recent storms. We will never understand the seemingly purposeless deaths. Nor will we ever be able to make sense of the violent destruction which has been experienced. But we can be confident that it is often through the asking of why that humanity draws closer to the Creator whom we quickly acknowledge but in times like this do not always understand.

And we can grasp with the Apostle Paul that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

_____________

Brady is minister to the university at Union University in Jackson, Tenn.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #16465]

You Have To Ask Questions

A father and son went fishing one day. While they were out in the boat, the boy suddenly became curious about the world around him.

He asked his father, "How does this boat float?" The father replied, "Don't rightly know son."

A little later, the boy looked at his father and asked, "How do fish breathe underwater?" Once again the father replied, "Don't rightly know son."

A little later the boy asked his father, "Why is the sky blue?" Again, the father replied. "Don't rightly know son."

Finally, the boy asked his father, "Dad, do you mind my asking you all these questions?" The father replied, "Of course not, you don't ask questions, you never learn nothin'."

Source: Victor Gideon

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Questions On Everyone's Mind

Romans 1

A Presbyterian pastor's answers to issues brought up by the September 11 terrorist attack.

1. HOW CAN YOU TRUST GOD AFTER THIS KIND OF AN EVENT?

The Christian answer to issues of suffering and tragedy always has to do with the Cross. Imagine you are an admirer and companion of Jesus Christ during his ministry. He is such a powerful worker of miracles that disease and hunger are almost banished from the countryside when he is present. He is such a powerful teacher and spiritual guide that thousands of people hear him gladly and get hope. Then suddenly this man who is the one to help the whole country is cruelly, unjustly cut off in the very midst of his life -- at only age 33.

What if you stood at the foot of the cross in front of this apparently senseless act of violence and tragic waste of life, and you said, "I can never, ever trust God again after an event like this!" And what if you went home and completely renounced all belief in God saying, "This proves that God is either a monster or indifferent or he doesn't exist"? If you did that, you would have been missing the greatest act of God's love and redemption in history. But of course no one at that time (and only a few for a good while afterwards) could fathom what had happened.

The Cross of Jesus Christ is the main reason I can trust God after this kind of event. First, the Cross is the best proof that God is not remote from us in our suffering. (See question #3 and #5 below.) Second, the Cross and its aftermath shows us how dangerous it is to judge God on surface appearances. His way is to work strength through weakness and bring resurrection and new power through death.

2. IS THIS A JUDGMENT FROM GOD ON OUR COUNTRY?

I don't think we can infer from prosperity that God is pleased with us, nor can we know from disaster that he is displeased with us. In Romans 1:18ff Paul hints that the worst punishment may be to get the happy life you want! That way you never wake up to your pride, self-righteousness or need for him. On the other hand, Luke 21:16-19 is a remarkable assertion that God's loving protection of his people does not mean exemption for suffering. Jesus says, "They will put some of you to death. All men will hate you because of me. But not a hair of your head will perish." This is startling to us. We would think that 'not a hair of your head will perish' must mean that we can't be attacked and killed, but that is not so. Jesus is saying that God exercises the most detailed and loving control of our lives ("not a hair"), and that in the broad scope of things every event works out for our good and his glory (Romans 8:28). But our life-plan may still include terrible tragedy, just as did Jesus' life plan. (Why should servants be above their master?) What do we learn from all this?

We learn that we cannot be sure that disasters imply divine judgment nor that prosperity implies divine approval. So how can we know whether God is displeased with America or not? The only way to know that for sure is to consult the Scriptures and its standards.

But this does not mean we cannot 'hear God's voice' in a time of tragedy. We can. Jesus was also asked whether certain corporate and personal tragedies were "judgments" of God. In Luke 13 he was asked if a massacre and (ironically) a falling tower were signs of God's judgment on those killed. His answer was an unequivocal "no", but he added cryptically "you yourselves should repent". That fits with C.S. Lewis' famous statement that "in prosperity God whispers to us, but in adversity he shouts at us." God speaks to us in all troubles. So what is God saying in times of tragedy and suffering? I think the message is different depending on how touched you are by the disaster.

If you have actually lost a loved one, I think you are being called to look to the only God (so to speak) of all the faiths of the world who literally lost a child. Jesus was himself the victim of a hostile, physical attack. I don't think you will really be able to handle the brutality of life either with a) a general God who has not suffered, or with b) a universe without any God in it at all. Both of those options bring no consolation. If there is no God, then even your outrage is trivialized. This is just the way life is. There is no justice. On the other hand, if there is a general God up in the sky, how do we know he cares? But the God and Father of Jesus Christ gives us a new resource that comforts deeply. He proved his commitment to ending our suffering by getting involved in it himself.

If you have not directly lost a loved one, but rather find yourself dazed, shaken, and fearful, God is saying to you: "Wake up to your need for me and wake up to what real security is. No military power or technology or human factor can make you safe. Only in the very center of my will is there any safety. You don't have the human ability to control things. You need me." C.S. Lewis pointed out that times of war or disaster don't really increase the amount of misery and death in the world, but they concentrate it and wake us from our illusion that life is manageable. "If we had foolish hopes about human culture, they are now shattered. If we thought we were building up a heaven on earth, if we looked for something that would turn the present world from a place of pilgrimage into a permanent city satisfying the soul of man, we are disillusioned, and not a moment too soon. In ordinary times only the wise realize it. Now (in war-time) the stupidest of us knows it." (C.S.Lewis, "Learning in War-Time")

3. HOW DOES VENGEANCE NOT MANIFEST ITSELF IN THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY?

In most people's minds there is a false "either-or" between vengeance and forgiveness. But that is a mistake. Forgiveness is not simply resignation or capitulation to evil.

In vengeance we simply pommel the enemy to hurt them worse than we were hurt. Our motivation is neither the common good nor the upholding of justice and truth per se. We simply want to assuage our own pain by seeing our enemy in worse pain than we were. Forgiveness, on the other hand, is not 'letting him off scot free'. Forgiveness is a means of giving up the hate and the desire for personal vengeance so that we can then pursue justice and maybe even reconciliation. I have personally found that I can't really confront a wrong-doer effectively about his or her sin until I've forgiven it. Then I am sometimes able to help the person see their wrong, or at least I am able to wisely pursue justice and restitution. But if I keep my heart full of hate, I never get anything done except fuel the cycle of retaliation. When I aim not to bring a person to see the truth, but rather only to hurt them, I never get anywhere. In other words, forgiveness does not 'let a person off' -- rather it frees my heart to pursue justice and/or reconciliation, depending on the reaction of the wrongdoer.

At the very least, forgiveness prevents me from becoming as evil as the other party. The basic plot-dynamic of The Lord of the Rings revolves around the conundrum of the Great Ring of the Dark Lord. The 'good' people have found his ring, but they can't use his own power against him without becoming just like the one who made it. They can, as it were, defeat the Dark Lord, but only by becoming an evil Dark Lord in his place. Unless we forgive our enemies, our anger could turn us as demonic as it has turned them.

Now that we know what forgiveness is, how can we do it? I don't know how to do that without embracing the message of the cross. The Cross means at least that a) God so hates evil and injustice that he is willing to come suffer himself in order to end it, but b) we are so tainted by evil as well that Jesus had to die so that we could be forgiven. Both of these truths are absolutely essential for forgiveness. Croatian theologian Miroslav Volf puts it perfectly:

Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans and exclude myself from the community of sinners. But no one can be in the presence of [the Cross] for long without overcoming this double exclusion....When one knows that the torturer will not eternally triumph over the victim, one is freed to rediscover the torturer's humanity and imitate God's love for that person. And when one knows that the love of God is greater than [my] sin, one is free to see oneself in the light of the justice of God and so rediscover one's own sinfulness. (Volf, The Spacious Heart, p.57)

4. HOW DO BOTH NATION AND INDIVIDUAL COPE WITH GRIEF?

It is interesting to see that the basic process of grief works itself out at both the individual and the corporate level. First comes numbness, shock, and an air of unreality. In the first stage it is necessary to simply express emotions together. We hold hands, cry together, and embrace. It is not a time for moralizing and instructing and looking for lessons. It is a time to "weep with those who weep" (Rom.12:15).

But second comes a stage of anger and/or creeping despair. In this stage there is a persistent need to 'make sense out of all this'. People have to find a way to think about the tragedy so that it does not make the rest of their lives meaningless. Ironically, there seems to be no way for people to deal with grief at this level without having recourse to the basic gospel dynamic of death-leading-to-resurrection. This is the basic approach that the mayor and governor have invoked and used. They say: "Out of the loss of good things will come even greater good things. We will come together as a community as never before. We will be brave as we have not been before. We will find victory through this defeat and strength through our weakness. This 'death' will lead to a resurrected city better than the one before."

I personally believe that this is the right way for NYC to deal with its grief. It must reflect the gospel dynamic of death-into-resurrection at a civic level. Through this New York could become less a place of individualistic achievement and more of a community. Through this Americans could become on the one hand humbler and more sensitive to the injustice and pain in the world and yet more committed to and (rightly) proud of our nation than ever before. In summary, we could become stronger through this weakness, not just in spite of it. That is the basic gospel dynamic.

However, the very deepest and best way to handle grief is to believe and use the gospel itself on the heart. Unlike any other religion, Christianity has at its very heart an act of tragic and unjust suffering and death. It has at its heart a man literally abandoned by God, crying out and unheard, yet this is the way God brings his salvation and hope into the world! How does this help us?

First, when we trust in his death on our behalf, it takes away fear for ourselves. We know that now even death can't harm us. "Death used to be an executioner, but the gospel has made him just a gardener." George Herbert) This frees us to love and sacrifice for others in such a way that makes the broken world more livable. We don't need to amass power and wealth in order to prove ourselves. Second, when we see how the very best man who ever lived had to suffer, it undermines our own self-pity or bitterness. If God could bring life and good out of the tragedy of the cross, then he can work through other suffering as well. Third, the cross gives us hope for the whole future. The Cross means that God is so committed to ending the suffering and brokenness of the world that he would himself become embroiled in it and pay the ultimate cost! And if we ask: "Why isn't the suffering over yet?" the answer is: "We don't know, but here's the proof that he's committed to it! The cross!" Only Christianity has a God who has suffered, proving his commitment to us in our brokenness. "To our wounds only thy wounds can speak, and no God has wounds but thou alone." (Edward Shillito)

If I have hope like that -- not just for a slightly stronger city, but for a literal new creation -- then I can face anything. In "The Lord of the Rings," one character is facing terrible evil, and suddenly he looks at a star in the sky. "Like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now for a moment his own fate ... ceased to trouble him ... putting away all fear..." Hope is not the same as defiance. Many people will turn to defiance to deal with their grief and pain rather than to hope. Hope comes from a certainty that there is a Judge and a Redeemer. The Cross proves that God is both.

5. SHOULD AMERICA RETALIATE?

Under question #4 we looked at the problem with simple cries for vengeance. But what should America do now? This question moves outside of my area of competence and wisdom. But here are a few observations that should be kept in mind as we move forward.

This is 'post-modern' war, and it is different than anything we have seen before. a) First, there are no rules. (We can kill civilians, children, whatever.) b) Second, it is not nation-on-nation. It is an international network of world terrorism attacking the multi-national corporations of world capitalism. c) Third, it is 'semiotic', aimed not at factories and air bases but at our icons and symbols in order psychologically debilitate and demoralize. d) Fourth, it is deliberately and bitterly ironic. It uses no bombs or guns, but our own technology against us. It is the very picture of Neitzschean ressentiment.

This is a new chapter in history. A knee-jerk 'warfare as usual' reaction will not likely be effective. Instead, I think that what is called for is a deeper change in the way America thinks about itself and the relationship to the rest of the world. When commentators say that the frivolous, me-centered decade of the 90's is officially over, that rings true to me. But I am not able to see what lies ahead. That's beyond my expertise.

6. WHAT ARE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE TO DO?

In The City of God St.Augustine contrasts the "City of Man" (which is the nexus of human systems based on power and pride) and the "City of God" (which is God's Spirit working through the message of the Cross to create new human communities based on love, service, and giving.) Augustine tells Christians to love the human city in which they live but to remember how it is distinct from the coming City. The City of God does not respond to an 'attack' with the firepower of guns but with greater and more sacrificial service in word and deed. And this is the way it 'wins' over the world. The hymn goes: For not with swords loud clashing, nor roll of stirring drums, but deeds of love and mercy the heav'nly kingdom comes. Christianity is unique because its central reality is that real influence comes not to those who take but those who give, not to those who rule but those who serve, not to those who accrue power but to those who sacrifice.

This is a tremendous moment for the "City of God" to show Jesus' love in more powerful ways. We should be available to our neighbors and friends spiritually to listen and pray with and for them, not to preach at them. We should also be available to our whole city to meet material needs. Christians should not sit back and wait for the phone to ring -- we should pro-actively fan out through the city and look for ways to help. After all, nobody asked Jesus to give himself for us. He came to us and gave us what we needed.

7. DOESN'T THIS JUST SHOW HOW DANGEROUS IT IS TO BELIEVE TOO STRONGLY THAT YOUR RELIGION IS 'RIGHT'?

It has been widely stated that the terrorist attacks show us that religion is only good for us in moderate amounts. The argument goes something like this: 'This proves that religious fundamentalists of all sorts are a great danger. They believe that God is on their side, and that they therefore have the right to conquer or kill others who don't believe." One writer even said, "It seems almost as if there is something inherent in religious monotheism that lends itself to this kind of terrorist temptation" because "in a world of absolute truth, in matters graver than life and death, there is no room for dissent and no room for theological doubt." (Andrew Sullivan, "This is a Religious War", New York Time Magazine, October 7, 2001) So the question is -- does 'religious fundamentalism' inevitably lead to oppression and even violence?

The right answer is -- it all depends on what your 'Fundamental' is. Let me give you two examples. First there is the Khymer Rouge, a Marxist movement that did not believe in God or any transcendent moral absolutes of any sort. Yet it was one of the most genocidal regimes in history. The second example is the Amish, who are an extremely conservative religious sect. They even refuse to wear modern western dress. They are by modern standards very patriarchal. They believe the Bible very literally and believe it is the absolute truth. If the Amish are such absolutists in their beliefs, why aren't we afraid of Amish terrorists?

The answer has to do with what the Amish "Fundamental" is. It is the same fundamental that all Christians share. Only Christianity (of the major religions) tells us that God came to earth and that when he did, he came not with a sword in his hand but with nails in his hands. He came not to accrue power, not to be served, but to serve and give his life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). And not only that, Jesus Christ did not pay the price of sin and die just for "good" people who were wisely following him, but also for people who were rejecting him and abandoning him. If that is the fundamental at the heart of your faith, at the heart of your self-identity, and at the heart of your relationship with God -- then it will make you (like Jesus) want to 'win' people to God by serving them, not conquering them. "For not with swords loud clashing, nor roll of stirring drums, but deeds of love and mercy the heavn'ly kingdom comes." (Ernest W. Shurtleff, "Lead On O King Eternal", 1888).If you believe very strongly in the absolute truth of the gospel of the cross and grace of God, it will only serve to drain you of superiority and self-righteousness.

8. DOESN'T THIS SHOW HOW DANGEROUS IT IS TO THINK YOU HAVE 'THE TRUTH'? WE CAN'T HAVE A FREE SOCIETY UNLESS WE ALL AGREE THAT NO ONE KNOWS THE TRUTH.

In the aftermath of September 11 many have written along the following lines: "The whole problem comes from the violence that accompanies a belief that you have the truth. The best way to have a free society is to insist that there is no (or that no one knows) 'absolute truth'."

This position is very shortsighted. First, it is intellectually contradictory. "There is an appearance of humility in the protestation that the truth is much greater than any one of us can grasp, but ... it is in fact an arrogant claim to a kind of knowledge which is superior to [all others]... We have to ask: 'What is the vantage ground from which you claim to be able to relativize all the absolute claims which these different scriptures and religions make?'" (Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society) To say "I don't know which religion is true" is a statement of humility. But if you say, "No one can know which religion has the truth" you are making a very dogmatic assertion which assumes the very superior 'religious knowledge' and certainty you just insisted that no one else had. For example, if you say to religious persons, "you must not insist that others modify their beliefs to bring them more into line with yours", you are asking them to modify their beliefs to bring them more into line with yours. You are doing the very thing you are forbidding. The contradiction is blatant.

Secondly, this approach does not really lead to as much tolerance within society as it often claims. "Efforts to craft a public square from which religious conversation is absent, no matter how thoughtfully worked out, will always in the end say to the religious that they alone, unlike everybody else, must enter public dialogue only after leaving behind that part of themselves that they may consider most vital." (Stephen L. Carter, The Dissent of the Governed)

Our core 'identities' are always moral and quasi-religious. Consider people with a passion for the poor arising out of Marxist convictions. They are basing their lives not on the findings of empirical science, but on a view of human nature and history that they accept through faith. Why then should people with formally religious commitments (like Christianity or Islam) not be allowed to bring their beliefs to bear on public issues?

But thirdly, this approach reduces every conflict to a simple naked struggle for power. Stanley Fish wrote: "There can be no independent standard for determining which of many rival interpretations is the true one" and so we should not justify our response to the attacks "invoking the abstract notions of truth and justice" but "instead we can and should invoke the particular lived values that unite us and inform the institutions we cherish and wish to defend." ("Condemnation without Absolutes", New York Times, October 15, 2001) What is he saying? He is saying that we should fight not because we are right but because it is advantageous to us to win. Ironically, he is adopting the offensive old Vietnam War slogan "My country -- right or wrong!" That slogan was repugnant because it meant, "I will defend America whether it is crushing and oppressing the poor or not. It doesn't matter whether we are right or wrong. We fight simply to keep power and defend our interests." That is exactly what this erudite and intelligent man is saying.

If there is no way to know the truth or who is right, then there is never such a thing as an unjust or wrong military action. But we all know in our hearts that napalming babies (in Vietnam) is wrong, and that crushing thousands of unarmed unwitting people (in the World Trade Center) is wrong. It is not impractical or uncongenial to our economic and political interests. It is wrong. So if you have a premise ("no one knows the truth") that leads you to a premise which you know isn't true, ("there is no way to tell that the WTC attack was wrong") then why not change the premise?

9. ALL THIS DOES NOT MAKE ME BELIEVE MORE IN GOD, BUT LESS. ISN'T ALL THIS UNJUST SUFFERING EVIDENCE AGAINST THE EXISTENCE OF GOD?

The president of American Atheist, the country's oldest organization for nonbelievers in God, said to reporters, "If that [September 11] wasn't a wake up call to a religious nation, I don't know what is. That said to me, 'There is no God.' Where was he, on a coffee break?" ("Atheists Decry Post-Attack Focus on God", Los Angeles Times, October 12, 2001) There are two ways to answer this.

The skeptic says: "If there is a God, he would have stopped such an evil thing from happening." But how does the skeptic know that this event was evil? All of evolution is based on the survival of the fittest. Violence of the stronger and more adaptive organisms over the weaker and less adaptive is utterly natural in this world. Why is it wrong, then, when humans do what the rest of nature is doing? How could you know if our part of the natural world was unnatural or bad? "If God does not exist...there is no longer any possibility of an a priori good existing. It is nowhere written that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now on the plane where there are only human beings. Doestoevksy once wrote: 'If God did not exist, everything would be permitted' ... If God does not exist, we have neither behind us nor before us a luminous realm of values, nor any means of justification of any behavior whatever. (Jean-Paul Sartre, "Existentialism and Humanism") So evil and suffering are major problems for people who believe in God, but they are actually even bigger problems for people who don't believe in God. If there is no God, what is your basis for being outraged at violence and oppression? How can you insist that something utterly natural to this world is somehow unnatural? And if you are sure that the World Trade Center is an evil, doesn't that comprise some evidence for the existence of God?

But there is a second way to respond to the question: "why would a good and powerful God allow evil and suffering?" There is a hidden train of logic deep in this protest. I think it goes like this:

"1. God would have to have a good reason for allowing evil and suffering to keep going on.

2. I can't think or perceive of any good reason.

3. Therefore, there cannot be any."

Of course, when you lay it out like that you can see how fallacious this reasoning is. If you have a God infinite and great enough to be mad at for not preventing evil and suffering, you have to (at the same time) have a God infinite and great enough to have reasons for allowing evil and suffering that we can't discern. (You can't have it both ways).

But how can we know if he has a good reason? [Christ] the god-man suffers too, with patience. Evil and death can no longer be entirely imputed to him since he suffers and dies. The night on Golgotha is so important in the history of man only because, in its shadows, the divinity ostensibly abandoned its traditional privilege, lived through to the end, despair included, the agony of death. Thus is explained the 'Lama sabachthani' and the frightful doubt of Christ in agony -- (Albert Camus, Essais)

Camus is saying that though we cannot discern the reasons that God might have for allowing evil, we have a remarkable assurance that he does have them. He himself has suffered infinitely with us, for us, on the cross. Surely this proves he is not indifferent to our suffering.

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Live In the Sunshine

John 9:5

Even when we don’t understand our present circumstances, we can walk in the light. As the song says, “Farther along we’ll know all about it. Farther along we’ll understand why. Cheer up my brother, live in the sunshine. We’ll understand it all by and by.” That’s the whole lesson of the Book of Job -- trust Him!

SUNSHINE IN YOUR MIND

In times of suffering, choose to walk in the light, to “cheer up” and “live in the sunshine.” We mind our attitude by minding our thoughts, for as a person thinks in his heart, so is he (Proverbs 23:7). “You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You” (Isaiah 26:3). Jeremiah faced cruel days, but deliberately turned his thoughts to God’s unfailing compassion and great faithfulness. “This I recall to mind,” he wrote, “therefore I have hope” (Lamentations 3:21-24).

One of the greatest discoveries of psychology is that it’s our thoughts which determine our emotions -- not feelings which control thoughts. Suppose you found out a friend was treating you to a two-week vacation. Would that influence your emotions? Or you learned a loved one was rushed to the hospital, would that affect your feelings?

Suppose you learned that Jesus Christ is the Light, and that in Him is no darkness. Suppose you wrapped your mind around that. It would bring sunshine into the darkest corners of your world.

John quoted Jesus as saying, “I am the light of the world.... I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in Me should not abide in darkness” (John 9:5, 12:46). John later told us to walk in the light (1 John 1:7). That knowledge in our minds brings hope and joy to our souls.

SUNSHINE IN YOUR SOUL

When our minds dwell on Jesus as the light, heavenly sunshine can pour into our souls. Our joy doesn’t depend on the events that surround us, but on the hope that’s within us. Our real life is with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3). It isn’t our external situation, but our internal Savior that determines our attitude in life. “But You, O Lord, are a shield for me, my glory and the One who lifts up my head” (Psalm 3:3).

Praise and thanksgiving are not emotions that we fall into, but attitudes we choose to exhibit. Some say praise happens when a certain level of emotional intensity is reached, resulting in an explosion in our spirit. But what do we do when everything’s going wrong?

We offer the sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving to the Lord as an act of obedience. We make a decision amidst difficulty that no matter what happens, we’ll praise God and walk in the sunshine. That allows attitudes of peace and joy (we could never have engendered in our own strength) to come to our spirits in response to our obedience.

I’ve had people who have gone through difficult times say to me, “Pastor, I’ve never loved God more than I do now. God allowed this to happen, and I don’t know why. But there is such peace in trusting Him with the unexplained. I don’t understand it, but I sense God’s presence in my life more than ever.”

When we trust God with the unexplained, sunshine floods our minds and souls -- and our faces, too.

SUNSHINE ON YOUR FACE

The Psalmist said, “They looked to Him and were radiant” (Psalm 34:5). The Bible recommends a sunny countenance. Solomon wrote, “A merry heart makes a cheerful countenance” and “A man’s wisdom makes his face shine, and the sternness of his face is changed” (Proverbs 15:13; Ecclesiastes 8:1).

D.A. Benton talks about the importance of the countenance in communicating confidence and leadership. She says women who smiled in their college yearbook photos went on to live happier lives with happier marriages and fewer personal setbacks than those who didn’t.

If you’re confused by life, trust God anyway. Read His promises, and remember:

Farther along we’ll know all about it.

Farther along we’ll understand why;

Cheer up my brother, live in the sunshine

We’ll understand it all by and by.

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[Original illustration at this number was added to HolwickID #17352]

Bridging the Heart and Mind

I recall speaking to a man who had come from a country where much blood had been spilled in internal strife, a land where someone’s heart was broken daily by a stray bullet or hate-filled ideological conflict. He told me that though for years he had found comfort in the knowledge that Christ had borne his sins, it was a new realization some time later that Christ had borne our sorrows, too.

That intimacy with God is a knowledge that bridges what one knows with what one feels, and takes both seriously. It is not a fatalistic posture that says "so be it" and resigns to accept what flies in the face of reason. When we learn God’s answers to our sentiments, we find contentment and courage and live a life of hope and confidence.

For too long we have forced a dichotomy between fact and feeling. Voltaire once remarked that all of man’s miseries are a reflection of his grandeur. In other words, our senses and sensations can and indeed ought to be joint indicators of the eternal and the true. That is not to say, as the song goes, "How can it be wrong when it feels so right?", for we might legitimately take issue with disregarding the objective realm of right and wrong at the mercy of momentary passion.

But there is another side to it: How can things be right when they feel so wrong? That is a much more difficult issue, isn’t it? Namely, does God expect one who is plagued by a lonely existence or a difficult marriage to dismiss that feeling as unreal? The search for a personal God in an impersonal world raises legitimate questions - does it not, my friend? And how we need wisdom amidst the myriad pleasures that promise to satisfy our longings.

But again, while reason and intellectual honesty are indispensable when handling such issues, we must never be content to deal with problems merely by an intellectual stroke of the pen. We mustn’t stop at the point where answers are merely stated as glib responses. For many people-perhaps even you-once called themselves believers, but when faced with death or difficulty, suddenly found their faith in God to be inadequate. Yet I must ask - was God inadequate or our knowledge of Him? Our aim, dear friends, should be to bring the whole of our being to engage the questions and the cries of the heart, so that we may truly live a life of hope and confidence.

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Why We're Here

Matthew 5:13

Why We're Here

Read: Matthew 5:13-16

You are the light of the world. --Matthew 5:14

Mark and Alice Westlind are missionaries in Colombia. Here is an excerpt from their prayer letter:

"Driving through Christmas traffic, fighting the drizzling rain, I chanced on a 4-year-old little girl. She was wet and cold and shaking. Her clothes were ragged, her hair was matted, and her nose was running. She walked between the cars at the stoplight, washing headlights because she was too short to wash windshields. A few gave her coins, others honked at her to get away from their vehicles."

I admired the honesty of their next sentence because I have felt the same way. "As I drove away only some 50 cents poorer, I raged at God for the injustice in the world that allowed the situation. 'God, how could You just stand by, helpless?'" The missionary concluded, "Later that evening, God came to me softly with that still small voice and responded not in like kind to my rage, but with tenderness, 'I have done something. I created you.'"

Jesus came as light to our sin-darkened, cruel, unfair world. As we respond with compassion and goodness to suffering people, we proclaim His life-changing power. We can't solve all the world's problems, but we can bear witness to the Light and bring glory to the Father (Mt. 5:16). --DCE

God uses us to show His love

To people who are suffering;

Our deeds of kindness light the path

To God that they are traveling. --Sper

Opportunities to be kind are never hard to find.

God's Rescue Operation

Job 42

One morning in February 1974 Jim Petersen was awakened in his hotel room in downtown Sao Paulo, Brazil, by sirens. Fire trucks were stopping outside. He pulled on a pair of pants and a jacket and went downstairs and out of the hotel. Across the street a 25-story building was burning. A column of fire was shooting up the center of it, and the stairs and the elevator shaft were burned out so that everyone inside was trapped.

On the roof about a hundred people were looking down on the fire below them, sure that they would be rescued. Many more had climbed out on the ledges outside their windows. He stood there horrified as he saw the fire leap from section to section. The flames would burst through another room, there would be an explosion and the glass would shatter. People at that window would fall back and die or else fall to the ground.

The building was too high for the hook-and-ladder trucks to reach everyone. Helicopters flew over and tried to drop ropes to the people, but the updraft from the fire was too great and the helicopters couldn't get close enough. As Jim watched the vain attempts of the fire department, he thought, WHY CAN'T THEY DO SOMETHING?

For three hours he watched 190 people die. It was hard for his mind to take in what he was seeing. Luke 13:4 kept running through his mind: Jesus commenting on the headlines of the day - eighteen people had died when a tower had fallen on them. Did God decide these eighteen were so bad he had to do away with them, so he herded them underneath the tower and let it fall and smash them? "No," Jesus said, "but it reminds you that unless you repent, you will all likewise perish."

After the fire was over Jim was walking through this city of eight million, being jostled by the crowds that are always in the streets, and suddenly he realized what Luke 13 really says. It meant every person in Sao Paulo was in that burning building. In fact, every person on earth is there. We are all terminal, and disasters remind us that unless we repent we will all likewise perish.

As the truth of that hit him, Jim found myself saying to God, WHY DON'T YOU DO SOMETHING? As he studied the Bible, he found that God has done something.

Why My Son?

Anything in your life you don't understand?

Sylvester Stallone is a successful and rich movie star. He was 35 and had a huge hit with his film Rocky III. And then his world was turned upside down when his second son, Seargeoh, then 3, was diagnosed with autism, a psychological disorder.

"When I heard, I was violently angry," Stallone said. "I didn't understand why this would happen to my boy. I felt betrayed. If you have a bad hand to deal, give it to me, not to an innocent child. What purpose did it serve? Was my life too good? Is it something I did, some word I said?"

Stallone hesitated a moment and then said, "Seargeoh has no idea who I am. I'm just another person to him. You have to accept his love on his terms. There is nothing I can offer or buy or give my son that can help him. I feel I let my child down. I feel helpless, and I have to accept that."

Some things have no real explanation this side of Heaven.

-adapted from USA Weekend

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[Original illustration at this number was added to HolwickID #18747]

Answer Their Whys

Luke 11:11

"There is a wonderful word - Why? - that children, all children use. When they stop using it, the reason too often is that no one bothered to answer them. No one focused and cultivated the child's innate sense of the adventure of life."

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 - 1962)

U.S. First Lady and humanitarian

Cited in BITS & PIECES

Dispelling the Fog

Job 1:21

We live in one of the mountainous regions of America. And mountains are beautiful - once you can see them. In areas like this, you can start quite a few mornings with fog and mist. Sometimes it just obscures the mountains in the distance, and sometimes I can't even see the neighbor's yard across the street. If you're the kind of person who lets the weather determine your mood, you could feel pretty "blah" on those foggy days. But there's something you can always be sure of when it's foggy - it's not going to be there all that long. Because even though you can't see the sun, it's shining out there, burning off that fog until you can see the beauty around you again.

Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A WORD WITH YOU today about "Dispelling The Fog."

Amy is a good friend of our family - and one on whom a heavy fog has descended in recent days - not unlike you, maybe. It's been a sad and hurting time. Amy and her husband have been joyfully expecting their first child. They were even talking about names they wanted for a boy or a girl. Until they got the heartbreaking news from the obstetrician - the baby had stopped growing ... their baby was gone. What followed was a long two weeks of waiting for the baby to pass ... of grappling with the numbing reality that their child's life had ended before they even got to meet him or her. The fog was thick, the sky was pretty dark, and the beautiful view was hard to see.

I asked Amy what stages she had gone through since they received the news. She told me that, of course, there was first a deep sadness. Then the sadness was mixed with confusion - just trying to sort out the "why's" and the "what if's." But Amy touched me very deeply with what she told me next. She said, "But then I reached a point where God helped me to start praising Him - even if I didn't understand Him." Then she smiled and said, "And when I started praising Him, most of the sadness lifted." The fog had lifted.

That was a secret discovered by the man who has epitomized human suffering for centuries - Job, the man who lost his health, his children, and his fortune. Somehow, he finds some peace as he says in Job 1:21, our word for today from the Word of God, "'The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.' In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing." Now, Job would agree with the peace that Amy found - "I don't always understand You, Lord, but I always trust You."

In Job 2:10, he asks, "Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?" And in chapter 13, verse 15, Job says, "Though He slay me, yet I will I hope in Him." Stubborn faith that still believes that the sun is shining even when you can't see it for the fog. The kind of faith that looks for things to praise God for at a time when it hurts so bad.

The dark times never leave you the same place in your relationship with God. Either you turn to Him or you turn from Him. And when you let your pain turn you from Him, you have just abandoned your only possible source of hope, healing and recovery.

But praise acknowledges a sun that is shining even when the fog is the heaviest. If this is a dark time, don't deepen your sadness by ignoring the Lord, or abandoning the Lord, or turning on the Lord. This is a time to throw yourself on His goodness - a time to ask Him for the grace to praise Him for all that He still is, all He's done, and all He's going to do. As Amy said, "Praise lifts the sadness." It dispels the fog.

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Son of A Slain Missionary Finds Redemption In Timbuktu

John 16:2

There is a popular story of a missionary pilot whose father was martyred for his faith finding himself in jeopardy at what feels like the end of the world. He has a chance encounter with a man whose own faith was powerfully affected by his father's death.

TruthOrFiction.com has had a lot of inquiries about whether this is a true story of inspirational fiction. It is a real story from the pen of Stephen Saint, the missionary pilot son of pioneer missionary pilot Nate Saint. Nate was one of five missionaries killed in Ecuador in the 1950's by stone-age Indians they were trying to reach. It became one of the most famous missionary events of the century. Nate Saint's death occurred when Stephen was a child, and in this candid article, he talks about the question that had lingered in his mind of why did his dad have to die? In part, he gets the answer in a remote corner of the earth.

The story as it has appeared on the Internet:

For years, I'd thought Timbuktu was just a made-up name for "the ends of the earth." When I found out it was a real place in Africa, I developed an inexplicable fascination for it. It was in 1986 on a fact-finding trip to West Africa for Missionary Aviation Fellowship that this fascination became an irresistible urge.

Timbuktu wasn't on my itinerary, but I knew I had to go there. Once I arrived, I discovered I was in trouble. I'd hitched a ride from Bamako, Mali, 500 miles away on the only seat left on a Navajo six-seater airplane chartered by UNICEF.

Two of their doctors were in Timbuktu and might fly back on the return flight, which meant I'd be bumped, but I decided to take the chance. Now here I was, standing by the plane on the windswept outskirts of the famous Berber outpost.

There was not a spot of true green anywhere in the desolate brown Saharan landscape. Dust blew across the sky, blotting out the sun as I squinted in the 110-degree heat, trying to make out the mud-walled buildings of the village of 20,000. The pilot approached me as I started for town. He reported that the doctors were on their way and I'd have to find another ride to Bamako.

"Try the marketplace. Someone there might have a truck. But be careful," he said. "Westerners don't last long in the desert if the truck breaks down, which often happens."

I didn't relish the thought of being stranded, but perhaps it was fitting that I should wind up like this, surrounded by the Sahara. Since I arrived in Africa the strain of the harsh environment and severe suffering of the starving peoples had left me feeling lost in a spiritual and emotional desert. The open-air marketplace in the center of town was crowded. Men and women wore flowing robes and turbans as protection against the sun. Most of the Berbers' robes were dark blue, with 30 feet of material in their turbans alone. The men were well armed with scimitars and knives. I felt eyes were watching me suspiciously. Suspicion was understandable in Timbuktu. Nothing could be trusted here. These people had once been prosperous and self-sufficient. Now even their land had turned against them. Drought had turned rich grasslands to desert. Unrelenting sun and windstorms had nearly annihilated all animal life. People were dying by the thousands. I went from person to person trying to find someone who spoke English, until I finally came across a local gendarme who understood my broken French. "I need a truck," I said. "I need to go to Bamako."

Eyes widened in his shaded face. "No truck," he shrugged. Then he added, "No road. Only sand." By now, my presence was causing a sensation in the marketplace. I was surrounded by at least a dozen small children, jumping and dancing, begging for coins and souvenirs. The situation was extreme, I knew. I tried to think calmly. What am I to do?

Suddenly I had a powerful desire to talk to my father. Certainly he had known what it was like to be a foreigner in a strange land.

But my father, Nate Saint, was dead. He was one of five missionary men killed by Auca Indians in the jungles of Ecuador in 1956. I was a month shy of my fifth birthday at the time, and my memories of him were almost like movie clips: a lanky, intense man with a serious goal and a quick wit. He was a dedicated jungle pilot, flying missionaries and medical personnel in his Piper Family Cruiser.

Even after his death he was a presence in my life. I'd felt the need to talk with my father before, especially since I'd married and become a father myself. But in recent weeks this need had become urgent. For one thing, I was new to relief work. But it was more than that. I needed Dad to help answer my new questions of faith. In Mali, for the first time in my life, I was surrounded by people who didn't share my faith, who were, in fact, hostile to the Christian faith, locals and Western relief workers alike. In a way it was a parallel to the situation Dad had faced in Ecuador. How often I'd said the same thing Dad would have said among the Indians who killed him: "My God is real. He's a personal God who lives inside me, with whom I have a very special, one-on-one relationship."

And yet the question lingered in my mind: Did my father have to die? All my life, people had spoken of Dad with respect; he was a man willing to die for his faith. But at the same time I couldn't help but think the murders were capricious, an accident of bad timing.

Dad and his colleagues landed just as a small band of Auca men were in a bad mood for reasons that had nothing to do with faith or Americans. If Dad's plane had landed one day later, the massacre may not have happened. Couldn't there have been another way? It made little impact on the Aucas that I could see. To them it was just one more killing in a history of killings.

Thirty years later it still had an impact on me. And now, for the first time, I felt threatened because of who I was and what I believed. "God," I found myself praying as I looked around the marketplace, "I'm in trouble here. Please keep me safe and show me a way to get back. Please reveal Yourself and Your love to me the way you did to my father." No bolt of lightning came from the blue. But a new thought did come to mind. Surely there was a telecommunications office here somewhere; I could wire Bamako to send another plane. It would be costly, but I could see no other way of getting out.

"Where's the telecommunications office?" I asked another gendarme. He gave me instructions, then said, "Telegraph transmits only if station in Bamako has machine on, message goes through. If not," he shrugged, "no answer ever comes. You only hope message received."

Now what? The sun was crossing toward the horizon. If I didn't have arrangements made by nightfall, what would happen to me? This was truly the last outpost of the world. More than a few Westerners had disappeared in the desert without a trace.

Then I remembered that just before I'd started for Timbuktu, a fellow worker had said, "There's a famous mosque in Timbuktu. It was built from mud in the 1500's. Many Islamic pilgrims visit it every year. But there's also a tiny Christian church, which virtually no one visits. Look it up if you get the chance."

I asked the children, "Where is Eglise Evangelique Chretienne?"

The youngsters were willing to help, though they were obviously confused about what I was looking for. Several times elderly men and women scolded them harshly as we passed, but they persisted. Finally we arrived, not at the church, but at the open doorway of a tiny mud-brick house.

No one was home, but on the wall opposite the door was a poster showing a cross covered by wounded hands. The French subscript said, "and by His stripes we are healed."

Within minutes, my army of waifs pointed out a young man approaching us in the dirt alleyway. Then the children melted back into the labyrinth of the walled alleys and compounds of Timbuktu. The young man was handsome, with dark skin and flowing robes. But there was something inexplicably different about him. His name was Nouh Af Infa Yatara; that much I understood. Nouh signaled he knew someone who could translate for us. He led me to a compound on the edge of town where an American missionary lived. I was glad to meet the missionary, but from the moment I'd seen Nouh, I'd had the feeling that we shared something in common.

"How did you come to have faith?" I asked him. The missionary translated as Nouh answered: "This compound has always had a beautiful garden. One day when I was a small boy, a friend and I decided to steal some carrots. It was a dangerous task. We'd been told that Toubabs [white men] eat nomadic children. Despite our agility and considerable experience, I was caught by the former missionary here. Mr. Marshall didn't eat me; instead, he gave me the carrots and some cards that had God's promises from the Bible written on them. He told me if I learned them, he'd give me an ink pen!"

"You learned them?" I asked.

"Oh, yes!" he exclaimed. "Only government men and the headmaster of the school had a Bic pen! But when I showed off my pen at school, the teacher knew I must have spoken with a Toubab, which is strictly forbidden. He severely beat me."

When Nouh's parents found out he had portions of such a despised book defiling their house, they threw him out and forbade anyone to take him in; nor was he allowed in school.

But something had happened: Noah had come to believe that what the Bible said was true. Nouh's mother became desperate. Her own standing, as well as her family's, was in jeopardy.

Finally she decided to kill her son. She obtained poison from a sorcerer and poisoned Noah's food at a family feast. Noah ate the food and wasn't affected.

His brother, who unwittingly stole a morsel of meat from the deadly dish, became violently ill and remains partially paralyzed. Seeing God's intervention, the family and the town's people were afraid to make further attempts on his life, but condemned him as an outcast.

After sitting a moment, I asked Nouh the question that only hours earlier I'd wanted to ask my father: "Why is your faith so important to you that you're willing to give up everything, perhaps even your life?"

"I know God loves me and I'll live with Him forever," he replied. "I know it! Now I have peace where I used to be full of fear and uncertainty. Who wouldn't want to give up everything for this peace and security?"

"It couldn't have been easy for you as a teenager to take a stand that made you despised by the whole community," I said. "Where did your courage come from?"

"Mr. Marshall couldn't take me in without putting my life in jeopardy. So he gave me some books about other Christians who'd suffered for their faith. My favorite was about five young men who willingly risked their lives to take God's good news to stone-age Indians in the jungles of South America." His eyes widened as he continued. "I've lived all my life in the desert. How frightening the jungle must be! The book said these men let themselves be speared to death, even though they had guns and could have killed their attackers!"

The missionary translator said, "I remember the story. As a matter of fact, one of those men had your last name."

"Yes," I said quietly, "the pilot was my father."

"Your father?" Nouh cried. "The story is true?"

"Yes," I said, "it's true."

The missionary and Nouh and I talked through the afternoon. When they accompanied me back to the airfield that night, we found that the doctors weren't able to leave Timbuktu after all, and there was room for me on the UNICEF plane.

As Nouh and I hugged each other, it seemed incredible that God loved us so much that He'd arranged for us to meet "at the ends of the earth."

Nouh and I had gifts for each other that no one else could give. I gave him the assurance that the story that had given him courage was true. He, in turn, gave me the assurance that God had used Dad's death for good.

Dad, by dying, had helped give Nouh a faith worth dying for. And Nouh, in return, had helped give Dad's faith back to me.

Author's Update on Nouh: Nouh, along with his lovely wife Fati, have three sons. They finished more than two years of study in the U.S. and faced many hurdles when they returned in January 1999 to the fourth-poorest area of the world. Please pray that they will continue to be faithful and that God will bless their commitment to spread His light in a dark and dangerous land.

9-11 Attack: How Could God Let This Happen?

Job 42

Jane Clayson conducted an interview with Billy Graham's daughter Anne Graham Lotz on CBS's "The Early Show" on the Thursday morning after the terrorist attacks of 9-11.

According to the transcript of the broadcast, Clayson asked, "I've heard people say, those who are religious, those who are not, if God is good, how could God less this happen? To that, you say?"

Lotz replied, "I say God is also angry when he sees something like this. I would say also for several years now Americans in a sense have shaken their fist at God and said, God, we want you out of our schools, our government, our business, we want you out of our marketplace. And God, who is a gentleman, has just quietly backed out of our national and political life, our public life. Removing his hand of blessing and protection. We need to turn to God first of all and say, God, we're sorry we have treated you this way and we invite you now to come into our national life. We put our trust in you. We have our trust in God on our coins, we need to practice it."

Life In Enemy Occupied Territory: Why We Suffer

Job 1

In suburban Washington, D.C., a sniper strikes at random, killing one stranger after another, throwing their families into the grip of sudden, agonizing grief.

Pain -- human suffering -- is a part of every life. When it strikes close to home, it often causes people to question the reality of God -- His nature, His power, His very existence. Why does a good God allow this?

The problem of human suffering fascinated two of the last century's most influential thinkers: Sigmund Freud and C. S. Lewis. But as Harvard psychiatrist Armand Nicholi notes in his book THE QUESTION OF GOD, these two men drew very different conclusions about God from their own encounters with pain.

Both Lewis and Freud experienced profound suffering. Lewis lost his mother when he was a child, endured the horrors of World War I, and watched his beloved wife, Joy, suffer an excruciating death from cancer.

Freud also lost precious family members: a daughter and a grandson. He experienced vicious anti-Semitism, endured ridicule from other scientists, and suffered physically from a painful cancer.

Human suffering led Freud to conclude that God does not exist -- that no loving God would permit people to endure such pain if He had the power to prevent it. He believed that men's fates were determined, not by a supernatural Father, but by "obscure, unfeeling, and unloving powers."

Lewis concluded otherwise -- but not without a struggle. After his wife's death, Lewis wrote that the danger was not ceasing to believe in God, but "of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him." Like Freud, he wondered how a loving God could allow him to suffer so terribly -- and why evil-doers appear to go unpunished.

As Nicholi notes, "Freud argued that the notion that good is rewarded and evil punished by 'the government of the universe' just does not square with reality."

By contrast, Lewis pointed to biblical teachings about a "Dark Power" abroad in the universe, "a mighty evil spirit ... the power behind death and disease and sin." We are, Lewis concludes, living in "enemy occupied territory."

Lewis also reminds us of the relationship between evil and free will. The human tendency to abuse free will -- to rebel from God and to violate the moral law -- is what leads to human suffering. We're at fault, not God.

On one thing Lewis and Freud agreed: that other people are the source of most of our pain. As Lewis writes: "When souls become wicked, they will certainly use this possibility to hurt one another ... It is men, not God, who have produced racks, whips, prisons, slavery, guns, bayonets, and bombs."

No life is free from pain. "How we react to it determines how it influences the quality of our lives," Nicholi writes. "If we believe, like Lewis, that a Supreme Being loves us and ultimately controls our destiny, we may endure with patience and hope. But if we hold to the materialist worldview, we are left with Freud's [despairing] exhortation to [simply] submit to the harsh realities which confront us."

Armand Nicholi's book THE QUESTION OF GOD is based on the course he has taught for years at Harvard. Many students, simply comparing the two worldviews, have chosen the one of faith and hope. Give the book to some of your skeptical friends, and they may do exactly the same.

As Judgment Looms, God's People Hold the Future

Luke 19:10

With America on the verge of God’s judgment, God’s people hold America’s future in their hands, Henry Blackaby during Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s annual Church Music Workshop.

“We are right in the middle of an incredible moment when I think … God has turned His face from His people,” said Blackaby, author of the best-seller “Experiencing God,” said in a three-part chapel series during the Feb. 17-19 gathering at the Fort Worth, Texas, seminary.

Blackaby spoke from Deuteronomy 31 and 32, emphasizing the song given to Moses in chapter 32 to give to the people of Israel to keep them walking faithfully with God and give them direction back to Him when they had lost their way.

“What song [today] is a plumb line about God and his mighty deeds that when you sing [it], it immediately brings you under conviction for sin?” Blackaby asked. “Or are we creating songs that avoid that completely?”

The people to whom the song was given were the ones God had designed to be the instrument in His hands to transform the rest of the world, Blackaby said. “But when their heart departs, God departs,” he said.

An estimated 7 million people across America currently are praying for revival, Blackaby said. Additionally, several thousand people are fasting for 40 days and asking for revival in the nation.

“Why does revival tarry?” Blackaby asked. After all, “We have been told that if you can get 2 million people praying for revival, God is bound to do it, or if you can get a million people fasting for 40 days, God is bound to bring revival. Well, if He does not [bring revival], we better ask Him why. But I do not hear anybody asking why.”

Defining idolatry as “fashioning God after what we want Him to be, so that He is no longer the God of the Bible,” Blackaby said an incredible amount of idolatry runs across the evangelical Christian community. He illustrated his point by noting that in asking numerous people the question, “When was the last time you heard a message on hell?” only a handful could recall such a message.

“You want to know why we don’t hear a message on hell? It is not seeker- friendly. Folks, if you go to be seeker-friendly and you are not God-friendly, God will indict you.”

The Bible can be an idol, Blackaby said, when Christians make the Scriptures reflect how they want God to be instead of who He really is. For example, Luke 19:10 says that the Son of Man came to “seek and to save what was lost.” This passage is almost universally interpreted as applying to unsaved people, Blackaby said. But, he noted, Jesus gave this teaching when quoting from Ezekiel 34 and therefore He was addressing believers rather than unbelievers.

“When God’s people are not repenting, then they are not the instruments through which God can touch a lost world,” Blackaby said.

Christians are often theological conservatives but practical atheists, Blackaby said in the second message of his series Feb. 18.

“Our problem is not in our doctrinal correctness,” Blackaby said. “Our problem is that we are not living it. And doctrinal correctness according to the Scripture is not head knowledge. It is heart knowledge.”

Even though the Pharisees were doctrinally correct, Blackaby noted, their hearts were far from God.

“Your life must be the incarnation of every message you preach,” he said.

Blackaby compared the Israelites described in Deuteronomy to present-day ministers who let the world shape their ministry rather than let their ministry shape the world.

A holy minister will look to the Word of God in every circumstance, Blackaby said, urging the seminarians to begin focusing on the Bible during their time at Southwestern. The Bible should be their most studied book, he said.

“It is not the manuals of men or the conversations in the back room that are your guide. It is this book,” Blackaby said as he lifted his Bible. “When you are in class, always ask the professors, ‘What Scripture is the basis of what you just said?’”

In his final message of the series, Blackaby reminded that God commanded Moses to teach the Israelites the song found in Deuteronomy 32 to address their propensity to forget about their covenant relationship with God. The song commands that God’s deeds be remembered.

“You cannot guide a congregation unless you know what God has been doing before you go there,” he said.

To illustrate, Blackaby emphasized the importance of studying the history and origins of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Cooperative Program channel of missions and ministry support. “The Cooperative Program is not something men designed, but something God put together,” Blackaby said.

The songs Christians sing today should take the same progression of the song God gave the Israelites in remembrance of all His mighty acts, Blackaby said.

“Let the people know that the God they serve is still in place. The God who led them across the Red Sea and took them across the river Jordan, defeated every enemy that came against them, provided for all their needs, is the same God we worship on Sunday.

“Have we forgotten the cross? Well then sing it. And let the singing of the magnitude of the love of the cross come through. … Sing the truth of God into the mouths and hearts of the people of God,” Blackaby said.

Blackaby concluded his series with a challenge: “The Holy Spirit is a flawless teacher and He is fully in place to bring all of His people dead-center into a relationship with God for this our day,” he said. “America is in a terrible condition and God’s people are making a negligible difference. But you can make a great difference. You can stay very close to the Word of God and remember the mighty deeds of God.”

Young Victims of Tragedy Need Answers When They Ask 'Why?'

“Why?”

It's one of the most popular questions of all time, especially among children. And when “why” is asked as a result of a traumatic life event, Ann Miller believes children should be given appropriate and honest answers. Miller, director of pastoral care at Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas, discussed the topic, “Hold My Hand: Spiritually Helping After Violence & Trauma,” in a series of workshops.

Miller identified trust as the principal factor needed in helping children cope with trauma. Even for adults, who often revert to their childhood when trauma strikes, trust must be a significant factor in the healing process, she said.

After high-level trauma or an injury, a consistency of trust allows a child to develop courage, hope and love, ultimately leading to healing, Miller said. “There are some things that we'll never understand this side of heaven,” she acknowledged, “but one of the things we have to do with children dealing with tragedy is answer any questions that we can and let them know they can trust us.”

Referencing Judith Herman's book “Trauma and Recovery,” Miller emphasized three key steps toward helping a child recover from trauma: establish safety, allow remembrance and mourning, and then develop reconnection.

“Often children are seen as 'non-persons' in tragedy,” a feeling Miller exhorted parents and children's workers to address with honesty.

*

Holy Ground

Job 42

I was approached the other day by a group of teenagers conducting a study on faith and belief in America. My reaction was immediately one of curious excitement. How exciting to find young people thinking through such vital matters, whether a project thought up in their own minds or assigned by a teacher. And I offered a quick prayer that God would speak clearly to them through their study and help me to speak clearly in my answers.

“Who or what in your words is God?” they asked first. “The answer we give to this question,” I said, “is one that touches all of life. He is Father, Creator, and King. He is the only One whose existence relies on no other, the only One who is in and of Himself perfect. He is the Hunter and Husband of our hearts and minds.”

Their second question asked whether or not I believed in absolutes and why. “Yes, I believe in absolutes; life doesn't make sense without them,” I said. “Imagine you are on a train and suddenly your brain tells you that something is moving, what will you do every time? You find a stationary object, a building or a tree, something that orients you, something that tells you whether it is your train or the train beside you that is moving. Absolutes are the stationary principles that are built into life and help us as we move through it. And they are truths which point us to the Giver of truth.” My young interviewers liked the illustration, which was not my own; I liked their responsiveness, their inquisitive interest in God and in truth.

And then they asked their last question: “If you were standing before God and had the opportunity to ask Him anything at all, what would you ask Him?” I cannot explain it except to say that my words seemed to leap out of me as I responded to their question almost involuntarily, “I would ask Him why my dad had to die so young.”

It is fascinating how the mind works because it simply cannot sever itself from the heart. As Fredrick Buechner has said, man cannot live his life only within his skull. In the midst of presenting the apologetics that govern my life, in the midst of offering the reasons for the hope that is within me, with one simple question I was swept back to that tender spot and reminded of my desperate need for these reasons, for the God that intimately reaches both my heart and my mind.

For undeniably, God was near to us through my father's short bout with cancer. Because though painfully realized, we can see the evidence of Romans 8:28 that in all things God works for good, and we can see as Joseph himself saw, that even in the midst of harm, God had intentions for good. And furthermore, because I have readily seen that there is a certain holy ground within a broken heart. Though a tenderness remains, we find in our deepest sorrow, the tender touch of God.

As holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel has noted, what we say about God we must be able to say over the darkest pits of life. Indeed, what we know about God, we must be able to profess in the midst of brokenness, in the middle of a very dark world, in the midst of disorienting pain and the angst of “why?”

I am absolutely convinced that a biblical theology and a sound apologetic is the balm to life's deepest wounds. For in Christ we find the only One who can provide coherent answers to life's most probing questions. Through the Cross we find meaning in suffering. We find the holy ground of God's broken heart and body, crushed for our iniquity, broken that we may find Him. We find the One who not only bore our sin but bore our sorrows. And in our relationship with God, found in Christ, made possible by this Cross, we find the One who not only is, but is here.

__________

It's Not A Shame To Do What You Love

Luke 13:1

February 1, 2003, I kept getting phone calls: “Jerry, have you heard about what happened to the Space Shuttle? Jerry isn't it terrible that the Columbia Space Shuttle exploded? Jerry, the Space Shuttle blew up over Texas. Jerry, isn't it a shame that those Astronauts died in that Space Shuttle Disaster?” And on and on... Since people know that I don't watch TV, they decide to call me and tell me when something really bad happens... Well, it's been some time since the Columbia Space Shuttle Tragedy and I have been thinking about what one of the people asked me... “Jerry, isn't it a shame that those Astronauts died in that Space Shuttle Disaster?”

Thinking about this question led me to learn more about the Seven Astronauts that were on board the Columbia Space Shuttle... I learned a lot about the lives of 45-year-old Mission Commander Rick Husband, 41-year-old Pilot William McCool, 48-year-old Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon, 41-year-old Mission Specialist Kalpana Chawla, 46-year old Mission Specialist David Brown, 43-year-old Payload Commander Michael Anderson, and 41-year-old Mission Specialist Laurel Clark... As I learned more and more about these seven individuals, the more I thought about that question that was asked of me... “Jerry, isn't it a shame that those Astronauts died in that Space Shuttle Disaster.”

Of course I was touched and saddened by the entire situation that happened, however, I soon realized that these Seven Astronauts were doing something that they loved with a passion... This had been their lifelong dream... They looked up at the Stars as children and had visions of the possibilities... They invested the better part of their lives just preparing for the opportunity to be selected to go on such a mission... They were definite about what they wanted to do with their lives and they were committed to making it happen... Did they realize the possibility of failure? Well, they were some of the most intelligent people on the planet so of course they knew about the risks and the possibility of failure... However, they also knew of the possibility of success and the rewards of personal fulfillment and inner peace that comes with the accomplishment of something that you feel is your mission or purpose or destiny in life... And they were willing to put everything on the line and go for it...

So the more I thought about that question I was asked, “Jerry, isn't it a shame that those astronauts died in that Space Shuttle.” The more I answered to myself, “NO,” it isn't a shame... The shame is in the millions of people who die in the confines of their own fears... The shame is in the millions of people who never take a chance at living out their dreams... The shame is in the millions of people who quietly submit to a life of misery and mediocrity... The shame is in the millions of people whom “Softly Tip-Toe through life trying to arrive at their graves' safely.”

That's the shame... There's no shame in doing something that's constructive, creative, and that makes a contribution to the rest of the World... Not going for your dreams... Not doing what you love... Not making a difference... That's the shame...

Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “If you haven't found something you are willing to die for, you aren't fit to live.” One of the astronauts - David Brown - was asked before the Columbia took off, “What if something went wrong and you didn't make it back?” David answered, “I want you to find that person that made the mistake, and I want you to tell that person that I hold no animosity... I died doing what I loved.” Ladies and Gentlemen... That's not a shame... That's beautiful...

My Question to You is this: When your life comes to an end (yes, you can't get out of life alive)... Will you have been brave enough to... Do What You Love?

*

Why On Earth

Mark 4:11

It was the intention of my high school math teacher to demonstrate exactly what every student wonders when drudging through exercises that challenge motivation and patience to the highest degree: “Why on earth is this important for the real world?” Interspersed throughout his lessons were statistics that were intended to spur us on to greatness. “Life and trigonometry are in the details,” he said. Followed by statements like: Had the position for one of the bases of the St. Louis arch been miscalculated by only a few centimeters, the two arms of the arch would have missed one another completely. Or, a 1.3-millimeter spacing error in the assembly of a mirror within the Hubble Telescope in effect put blinders on the most powerful telescope ever made (and embarrassed a few former math students).

But there was something freeing about his vow to reveal the significance of the tedious coursework he readily assigned. He didn't see us as indolent students asking “why bother” in harmonized whines (though our motives were undoubtedly mixed and laziness was easily one of the factors.) He made it okay to ask why — even mandatory. We did well to ask what on earth trigonometry had to do with reality, because however the question was asked, there was an answer. And if we would hear it, we found it wasn't nearly as meaningless as we expected.

I have often wondered what went through the minds of the disciples as Jesus spoke of mustard seeds, and wineskins, and thieves in the night. In their three years with Jesus, I am sure the question crossed their minds: “What on earth does this parable have to do with the real world?” More than once the Gospels impart the disciples questioning amongst one another, “What is he talking about?” Imagine their excitement when Jesus promised that a time was coming soon when he would “speak plainly.”

As humans we are inclined to ask why. It becomes our favorite question at age two and something is lost when we forget it. The desire to know simply for the sake of knowing is what separates humans from animals, said C.S. Lewis. We are inclined to ask, inasmuch as we must ask, because there is an answer. As T.S. Eliot penned,

We shall not cease from exploration,

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

As the disciples watched and listened, Jesus told a crowd of people a story about seeds and soil. When he finished they took him aside and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?” (Matthew 13:10).

Jesus replied, “I speak to them in parables because 'though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.’ In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: 'You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.’ For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes... But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear” (Matthew 13:13-16).

This was an interesting response. It reminds me of the circular discussions we had as children and the why-halting words of a parent, “Because I said so.” In effect, Jesus seems to say, “I speak to them in stories they don't understand because they don't understand.” Yet even after calling the disciples blessed because their eyes and ears were getting it, he still explains the parable to them in detail.

What seed had to do with the real world, I'm not sure the disciples saw clearly before it was explained to them. But that the man before them had something more wonderful to do with reality than they could yet grasp was knowledge that opened their eyes along the journey and made them blessed.

As my math teacher urged us to see that it was our vision of the “real world” that needed revising, so Jesus compels us to see more. His parables leave us asking not only, “What does this have to do with the real world” but more invasively, they leave us inquiring, “What IS the real world?” However the question is asked, with ears hardly hearing, with eyes opened or closed, there is an answer.

The One whom men did not crown and cannot dethrone speaks truth into a truth-starved world; we do well to inquire what he has to do with reality.

__________

*

Why?

You wonder if it is a blessing or a curse to have a mind that never rests. But you would rather be a cynic than a hypocrite, so you continue to pray with one eye open and wonder:

about starving children about the power of prayer about Christians in cancer wards....

Tough questions. Throw-in-the-towel questions. Questions the disciples must have asked in the storm.

All they could see were black skies as they bounced in the battered boat... .

A figure came to them walking on the water. It wasn't what they expected..... They almost missed seeing the answer to their prayers.

And unless we look and listen closely, we risk making the same mistake. God's lights in our dark nights are as numerous as the stars, if only we'll look for them.

We come to you in prayer, Father. We don't know the answers to the whys. We depend on you. We don't know all the answers, but we know who knows the answers.

God and the Tsunami (part 1)

Job 42

The scale of suffering and the magnitude of the disaster in Southeast Asia defy the imagination. Sitting comfortably in our own homes and offices, we can look at the images, video segments and computer simulations, knowing all the while that, in the nations that encircle the Indian Ocean, the death toll continues to mount.

This much is clear -- the direct death toll from this disaster is likely to reach 250,000, and subsequent deaths related to the disaster may drive the total number of deaths to well over half a million. Those numbers are hard to take, but the video images are even harder to see. Satellite pictures taken before and after the massive tsunamis struck unprotected coastlines tell the story. Before the tsunami, a thriving region is clearly visible. In the aftermath, entire towns, villages, and cities have been wiped off the map. A wall of water traveling several hundred miles an hour and reaching the height of a multi-story building slammed into Thailand, India, Indonesia and Sri Lanka with devastating force. At least nine nations were affected, with some of the waves bringing destruction as far away as Somalia on Africa's eastern coast.

The magnitude of this disaster is multiplied when we realize that these very areas most devastated by the tsunamis are among the most impoverished and helpless regions of the earth. On December 26, 2004, families were washed away, children were ripped from their parents' arms and suffering beyond description settled upon the earth. Why?

That question comes immediately to the mind of any sensitive person and any individual whose mind is allowed to rest for even a moment upon the magnitude of this disaster. At the first level, the scientific explanation seems clear. A massive earthquake, registering over 9.0 on the Richter scale, occurred more than six miles beneath the surface of the Pacific, just off the Indonesian island of Sumatra. In an instant, one of the most beautiful parts of the world became one of the most deadly, as successive mountains of water radiated from the epicenter of the quake and headed for some of the earth's most densely populated coastal areas. The sliding of tectonic plates beneath the surface of the ocean led to massive devastation and a tidal wave of grief and questions.

How do Christians explain this kind of suffering? What do we have to say about the meaning of an event like this? In short order, questions like these found their way to the front pages of newspapers and the front lines of our cultural conversation. All too soon, confusion was evident, as various religious leaders offered advice and counsel.

Writing in The Guardian, reporter Martin Kettle put the problem in clear form: “Earthquakes and the belief in the judgment of God are, indeed, very hard to reconcile. However, no religion that offers an explanation of the world can avoid making some kind of an attempt to fit the two together.” As Kettle asserted, “As with previous earthquakes, any explanation of this latest one poses us a sharp intellectual choice. Either there is an entirely natural explanation for it, or there is some other kind. Even the natural one is by no means easy to imagine, but it is at least wholly coherent.”

For the atheist or agnostic, the natural explanation will suffice. Those who hold to a naturalistic and materialistic worldview will simply see this disaster as one more meaningless event taking place in a meaningless universe. As British philosopher Bryan Appleyard concluded, “The simple truth is what it has always been: nature, uncontrolled, unbidden, unpredictable, can still humble our pride and wreck our schemes in an instant. We are a thin film of thought confined to a narrow band around an undistinguished planet orbiting a pretty average star.” In other words, this is just one more accident taking place in an accidental world, observed by accidental human creatures.

The challenge to the Christian faith is clear, even as it is often crudely put forth by secular critics. If God is both omnipotent and benevolent, how can disasters like this happen? This question was stated concisely by playwright Archibald MacLeish in his Pulitzer-prize winning play, “J.B.” Through his character Nickles, MacLeish poses the theological challenge: “If God is God, He is not good; if God is good, He is not God.”

An example of how not to give a Christian answer was provided by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, Williams said this: “Every single random, accidental death is something that should upset a faith bound up with comfort and ready answers. Faced with the paralyzing magnitude of a disaster like this, we naturally feel more deeply outraged -- and also more deeply helpless. We can't see how this is going to be dealt with, we can't see how to make it better. We know, with a rather sick feeling, that we shall have to go on facing it and we can't make it go away or make ourselves feel good.” The newspaper headlined the archbishop's column, “Of Course This Makes Us Doubt God's Existence.” After the article was published, the archbishop protested the headline, and his spokesman claimed that the paper's characterization of the archbishop's article was “a misrepresentation of the archbishop's views.”

In response, the paper acknowledged that while it may have misrepresented the archbishop's argument, nevertheless, “he himself must accept much of the blame.” Surely speaking for the paper's readers as well as its editors, the paper observed, “His prose is so obscure, his thought processes so hard to follow, that his message is often unclear.” In exasperation, the paper simply concluded, “If Dr. Williams hopes to teach and inspire his flock, he really must learn to express himself more clearly. Otherwise he will be forever doomed to be the victim of his own erudition.”

In Australia, much closer to the tragedy, the Anglican dean of Sydney, Phillip Jensen, explained that natural disasters are a part of God's warning that judgment is coming. Jensen was right of course, as Jesus Himself pointed to natural disasters as a warning to human beings of our own mortality and of the coming judgment of God. Nevertheless, this was too much for more liberal churchmen in Australia. Neil Brown, dean of Saint Mary's Cathedral (Catholic), described Jensen's comments as “a rather horrible belief when you begin to think about it.”

Well, that's orthodox Christian theology, when you think about it. Jesus clearly warned His disciples that famines and earthquakes, along with wars and other ominous phenomena, would be the “birth pangs” of coming tribulation and judgment (Matthew 24:7-8).

This is no time for theological hand-wringing and evasion. A great tragedy like this often is the catalyst for bad theology offered as soothing counsel from religious professionals.

A faithful Christian response will affirm the true character and power of God -- His omnipotence and His benevolence. God is in control of the entire universe, and there is not even a single atom outside His sovereignty. And God's goodness and love are beyond question. The Bible leaves no room for equivocation on either truth.

We must speak where the Bible speaks, and be silent where the Scripture is silent. Christians must avoid offering explanations when God has not revealed an explanation. Finally, Christians must respond to a crisis like this by weeping with those who weep, by praying with fervent faithfulness, by offering concrete assistance in Christ's name and, most importantly, by bearing bold witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ -- the only way to bring life out of death.

Faith Divides the Survivors and It Unites Them, Too

Job 36:15

Next door to four houses flattened by the tsunami, three rooms of Poorima Jayaratne's home in Ambantota, Sri Lanka, still stood intact. She had a ready explanation for that anomaly, and her entire family's survival: she was a Buddhist, and her neighbors were not.

“Most of the people who lost relatives were Muslim,” said Ms. Jayaratne, 30, adding for good measure that two Christians were also missing. As proof, she pointed to the poster of Lord Buddha that still clung to the standing portion of her house.

The earthquake and tsunami that killed at least 150,000 people reached from Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim majority nation, to India, the world's largest Hindu one. It hit Thailand's Buddhist majority and Muslim minority, and this tiny island country, which is mostly Buddhist but has sizable Hindu, Muslim and Christian populations.

Across nations and religions there has been a search for explanations of not only why the tsunami came but why it killed some and not others - and a vibrant, sometimes virulent cottage industry is supplying them.

Some discern a lesson that humanity should unite, citing the bodies of people of all religions tumbling together into mass graves, while others see affirmations of the rightness of their own path. Amid sympathy, there is judgment; beneath public compassion, a private moralizing.

The tsunami may also deepen religious and ethnic divisions, perhaps dangerously. In Sri Lanka in recent years, dozens of churches have been attacked by militant Buddhists. It is the Christians, some Buddhists say, who are to blame for the tsunami.

Din Syamsuddin, a cleric and deputy chief of Muhammadiyah, one of Indonesia's largest Muslim organizations, said the people of the Aceh region near the epicenter had calmly accepted the tragedy as a sign of God's disapproval and a divine examination to test their faith.

Natural disasters are an indication that man has strayed from the path of God, he said: “We believe it is an examination, and we face it with passion and submission.”

Because a physical tragedy is only a test, Acehnese Muslims believe, the real punishment may come later, he said. According to Islamic doctrine, only after critical self-evaluation and positive deeds can people begin to repair their relationship with God.

Rebuilding after the tsunami really means “returning to the center of life, which is God,” Mr. Syamsuddin said.

In mostly Hindu India, some see a divine reaction to a society whose changing economy is feeding corruption and greed. Muthuvel, 55, a fisherman in Nagappattinam whose wife is missing, said, “Fishermen are becoming greedy and jealous of other richer colleagues.”

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, a guru in India who has built a huge following among the country's growing and stressed middle class, said: “If you forget nature, this is the way nature reminds you. Crime and stress punish nature.”

Here in Sri Lanka, four religions - Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity - coexist. Their followers' explanations often exhibit a commonness of belief, reflecting the primal reasons the religions evolve and the ways they have influenced one another over time.

Most of the population follows the Theravada school of Buddhism, in which understanding dukkha, or suffering, is a central concept, as is accepting the inability to control it. The Venerable Battapola Nanda, a priest near Galle whose temple has become a relief camp, said the tsunami reinforced a central Buddhist tenet: “If you think something will happen, it never will,” he said. “If you think it never will happen, it will.”

A similar sense of the limits of man and the greatness of God informed the words of Nasir Mohammad, a Muslim textile shop owner in Hambantota. It is not for humans to explain why so many children died, but to accept it, he said. “God makes the world,” he said. “He can give, he can take. Sometimes he gives more. Sometimes he takes.”

Always, there is a search for signs, as in the conviction of Rose Jayasuriya, 59, that her older sister Patricia, 74, still missing, died blessed because she had just taken communion when the sea invaded their church. Sri Lankan Buddhists believe that rebirth follows death, and that sin and good deeds determine one's future in this life and the next. Many Buddhists said they suspected that those who had lost children had done something wrong in a previous life.

M. Vilmot, 49, a baker whose 14 family members survived, was sure that those who had lost loved ones were being punished for some sin. “We earn money the correct way,” he said. “That's why it didn't happen to us.” His bakery, perhaps 30 feet from the sea, was damaged but not destroyed. He said he followed the five Theravada Buddhist precepts of not lying, stealing, drinking, philandering or killing animals, while others only gave money to temples and then misbehaved.

G. H. Bandusile, 44, a fisherman's wife in Koggala, was certain that punishment was being meted out to the survivors, not the dead. “The good people are gone,” said Ms. Bandusile, who lost her mother. “The bad people must stay and suffer.”

On a back road in the village of Nagurasa in the Galle district, T. G. David, a Buddhist farmer and strict vegetarian whose beard gave him the look of a prophet, said the fishermen devastated by the tsunami had paid the price for their work.

“Fishermen are taking life,” said Mr. David, who is 72. “Farmers have no problems.”

Sri Lankans of all religions tried to link the ferocity of nature to the fallibility of man. At the Sri Kathiresan Temple in Galle, a Hindu temple, A. P. Sethuraman, the trustee, blamed activities like drinking and drug use by foreigners in particular.

“Many bad things happen along the seaside,” he said. It was a lesson sent by Lord Shiva, he said: “You must live the right way.”

His proof was the local shrine to Vishnu and Kanda, two Hindu gods. It survived where the buildings all around it did not. Ramzy Mohammad, 32, a Muslim businessman, said many Sri Lankan Muslims believed God was angry about dissension in families, growing drug use and rape.

“He got angry and washed up the water,” said Mr. Mohammad, who lost 11 family members.

The Rev. Charles Hewawasam, a Roman Catholic priest who lost a nun and 18 members of his congregation in Matara, Sri Lanka, saw the tsunami as a reaction to ethnic and religious tensions.

“Nature is saying: 'You may have your powers, your fighting. I can destroy within a second the whole thing,' “ he said. The dead, he added, “have sacrificed their lives for us to teach a lesson: be together, treat one another as human beings.”

But for some the kind of divisions he cited seem to have only been deepened by the disaster.

At the Buddhist temple in Kalatura, Sri Lanka, Nimal Ranjit Perera blamed an apocryphal Christian who had made a cake in the shape of Lord Buddha and then cut it with a knife. Indonesia, he added as an aside, was struck because Indonesians had been manufacturing and wearing underwear with the image of Lord Buddha.

At the same temple, Thenahandy Asha, 26, blamed carnivorous Christians who had “killed many animals” on Christmas, the day before the tsunami. “God was angry,” she said, so on the next day poya, or full moon day, holy in Buddhism, he delivered his punishment. Samantha Silva, 24, agreed: God was angry that so many people had eaten meat, and consumed alcohol, on Christmas.

But he could not explain why so many Buddhists had died, or so many children - his own girl and boy, ages 5 and 2, among them. His brain was too upset to puzzle that out, he said. All he could do was leave flowers and light lamps at the temple, and pray that his children's next lives would be good ones.

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Evelyn Rusli contributed reporting from Indonesia for this article, and Hari Kumar from India.

Pain and Purpose

2 Corinthians 4:17

Imagine walking into a room to find an infant wailing as if her life depended on it. An adult, piercing the infant’s skin with a sharp object, is causing the distress. Any compassionate person would attempt to intervene and rescue the child, wouldn’t he? But let’s add a few more details into this scenario. What if the woman wounding the infant is a doctor and her instrument is a syringe? What if she tells you that this child must be immunized, or later she could contract a serious illness?

Sometimes something that seems terribly cruel or senseless has a good purpose. That purpose is not always as readily apparent as in this scenario. Although someone familiar with preventative medicine may see the purpose in causing pain to a helpless child, the child itself cannot understand why she is in pain.

There are times in life when we are like this infant. We cannot imagine why God -- the one who is supposed to love us -- doesn’t step in and stop our pain. Assurances from others that God knows best are about as useless as a mother’s soothing assurances, drowned out by the infant’s cries. “If you love me, why don’t you take away this pain?” ask the child’s cries.

Philosophers and theologians have wrestled for ages with the questions that arise from pain and suffering. It is tempting to think that if we had more knowledge, we could resolve the Problem of Pain. If we only knew WHY God allows what seems to be senseless suffering to exist, it would cease to trouble us. But even if the doctor explained the biology of vaccinations to the infant, her mind could never understand it; neither can we, with our finite minds, grasp the divine purposes of God, even if He were to draw back the curtain of his will.

Yet there is reason to hope. As a child grows, he learns to trust his parents long before he learns how inoculations work. A shot might hurt a six year old boy just as much as it hurt his infant sister, but he clenches his teeth in determination to be a big boy. Although he may fear the pain, he doesn’t fear that his mother has turned on him by allowing this doctor to hurt him. Why? He has come to trust her. She has told him that this shot will hurt, but it is for his good.

If your “why” questions seem to fall on deaf ears, try asking some “who” questions. Who is God? What do you know about his character? Do you know Him? Are you willing to trust Him in your pain until He reveals his purpose?

This is the kind of trust that Jesus demonstrated for us in the Garden of Gethsemane. He prayed to his Father, “Let this cup pass from me, yet not my will but yours be done.”

We are assured in God’s word that “this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17). This is not something that we can prove to ourselves. We are given the choice to trust God. Suffering is inevitable. If we choose to trust God in our pain, we have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

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The Crouching Haunt of Violence

Job 16:17

History has a way of provoking life’s most basic questions, sometimes with deadly force. Standing beside ruins and devastation, newscasters daily relay horrors. As harsh realities take hold, the irrepressible “why?” often surfaces in the mind of the beholder. Occasionally, even national conscience is so aroused as to ask “why?”

Yet in reality, the question of “why?” in a violent act, as painful as such a mindless atrocity can be, is nevertheless meaningless to raise unless we also ask the question of life itself -- why are we here? But alas! that question is dismissed as no longer relevant in an academically sophisticated culture.

Is this not, then, a self-destructive contradiction for one who debunks the notion of objective morality? A whole host of secular thinkers glibly explained away the need for a Creator, and in positing a mindless, accidental universe, in effect stated that there is no need to ask “why?” of the Big Bang. Why, then, is it necessary to raise the question of any other explosion? It is evident that those who vent such hostility toward the absolute never take into account that they must then, forfeit the right to raise questions that imply a moral framework. Those who reduce the world to merely the physical cheat when they stray into the metaphysical.

In stark distinction, it is here once again that God’s Word beckons with his pleas to a morally deaf world. Granted, the questions raised come from two groups. The deep and private pain of those for whom the loss is personal and devastating cannot be simplistically addressed. For them there is one who speaks from a Cross. But there is another side to this query, and that is in understanding how and why hatred and murder can be conceived and nurtured in the human heart in the first place. To that question there is an answer; there are answers. “He who has an ear, let him hear.”

Interestingly enough, the very first murder in the Bible did not occur because of two irreconcilable political theories. The murder of a man by his own brother was an act unmistakably born out of their differing responses to God. Trapped by the temporal, Cain was deluded by the belief that he could vanquish spiritual reality with brute force. God saw the inevitable result of the jealousy and hatred deep within Cain’s heart, and in a challenge that would determine his destiny, warned him to deal with it. “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door; it desires to have you, but you must master it” (Genesis 4:7).

There are only two options; either come to God on his terms and find our perfect peace in his acceptance of us, or “play God” with self-defining morality and kill -- becoming as a result restless wanderers, ever running from the voice of our brothers’ blood which cries out from the ground. At its core life is sacred and of inestimable value, whether it is the life of a darling child in the fresh blossom of childhood, or the life of an elderly, weak, and frail recluse. Both have one thing in common -- they are made in the image of God. That is why murder is described in Scripture for what it is, an attack upon God’s image -- a denial of our spiritual essence. It is that essence which gives us our dignity and our worth. It is that essence which is our glory.

We may try by intellectual duplicity to rearrange the furniture of life and define it only in material terms, but each time we sit back and read of the human experience in Darfur or Virginia, Bosnia or Rwanda, we shift and turn with revulsion, realizing that there is no harmony in the secular “decor,” for the cry within of the sacred cannot be suppressed. That is the reason we scream forth “why?” at the headlines: we cannot silence the still, small voice inside that speaks of the intrinsic sanctity of life, and that it ought not to be violated.

Try as we will, the logical outworking of a denied absolute cannot be escaped. God said it to Cain then and He says it to us now. “If you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door, and desires to have you.” Cain became a murderer because he willfully refused to worship the living God and chose, by violence, to enthrone himself.

This is an aspect of modern society we have grossly underestimated, and in the process we have robbed ourselves of even common sense. God is not only the Creator who defines us philosophically, but He is also the Provider who meets us existentially in our greatest need, and gives us the confidence and comfort that we are beloved and not orphaned in this world. The Apostle Paul voices this greatest of all satisfactions to the entire created order, saying that we are created for our heavenly Father’s glory -- for his praise. That is why we are here. What a moment it will be when you and I stand before Him, and He says, “Well done! Well done! Well done!” God’s created order and God’s care-filled involvement in our lives are intrinsic to the solution of violence.

If we are to ever find an answer to the haunting problem of violence, there will need to be a radical shift in our understanding, and recognize not only the seen, but also the reality of the unseen, for the latter precedes the former. We would do well to take note that long before headlines hit like explosives in our minds, an even greater implosion had taken place in the minds and hearts of those who set the news in motion. Human government cannot deal with that internal devastation, but God can. That “unseen” war is a spiritual struggle -- the choice between turning to God or playing God. For that triumph only God is big enough, and the sooner we realize and acknowledge our need for Him the closer we will be to moving from the symptomatic and superfluous to the cure.

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Miltons In A Weary Land

Luke 19:42

Milton! thou shouldest be living at this hour:

England hath need of thee: she is a fen

Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,

Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,

Have forfeited their ancient English dower

Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;

Oh! raise us up, return to us again:

And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.

Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:

Pure as the naked heavens, majestic free,

So didst thou travel on life’s common way,

In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart

The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

This was the cry of William Wordsworth early in the nineteenth century as he saw the demise of English culture underway. The Church, the state, the home, the writers and shapers of society were called to task, for the nation had lost its soul and was hurtling headlong towards moral defacement. “Milton!” he cried, “England hath need of thee.”

I remember wondering similarly as news unfolded of the unthinkable tragedy at Columbine High School. Sadly, this would not be the last of its kind, or the last of my wondering. As one who stands before audiences all over the world facing hard questions, I am sometimes tempted to ask a question of the questioner, “Do you really want a solution or is the constant refrain ‘why’ a way of escaping the responsibility of the answer?” Jesus wept over his own beloved city and said, “If only you knew the things that belonged to your peace, but now they are hid from your eyes” (Luke 19:42). Their problem was not the absence of answers, but rather, the suppression of them. When we cry out “Why?” in the midst of the unthinkable violence of our time, our predicament, I believe, is the same. There are some clues we already have -- enough to bring correctives within our reach. But do we really want the truth?

At the start we would do well to remember that no out-ward environment alone can completely eradicate the destructive. But that does not mean that there is nothing we can do to minimize the murderous instincts of some. There are issues in our society that we must have the courage to address, though they are not popular and never will be, for they stare at us in the face. Our societal indicators are important because they are pointers to the malady. At the root of our cultural rot is a wanton failure to admit our contradictions, and contradiction is to reason what evil is to life. When our reasoning is contradictory, the argument breaks down. When evil invades a life, life breaks down.

Those of us in our middle years have only a faint clue of what the world offers to the young long before fact is tied to feeling or one’s conscience is steadied and empowered. We have given our children contradictory assumptions about life and are then shocked at their evil behavior and the disintegration of their lives. This cultural breakdown did not happen overnight. Simplistic and canned answers that assert our rights without paying any heed to our thrill-worn culture will exact a heavy price. Here is the hard fact that underlies all our contradictions. We want pertinent answers without granting that absolute freedom and absolute truth are mutually exclusive. The painful reality is that the answer is inextricably bound to what we are willing to sacrifice. One of the two must be qualified if the other is to hold sway. The choices life offers us are not value-free.

In his cynical way, Malcolm Muggeridge reminded us that all new news is old news happening to new people. He was right. The parents of the first family in Eden questioned whether God had really spoken. Here autonomy squared off against the revelation of God. A value-free society was introduced. Second, the son in turn questioned whether the altar really had any worth. Secularism evicted the sacred and planted the void within. Denying the place of a moral law and thwarting the legitimacy of worship built the first cemetery at Eden. And so it is that we all agree with Muggeridge’s unhappy reminder that atrocities are not new, only the victims are.

We would do well, however, to remember another piece of news which is equally old. In C. S. Lewis’ THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS a senior devil is training a junior devil on how to destroy faith in God from the hearts of people: “Work on their horror of the same old thing. The horror of the same old thing is the greatest passion we have put into the human heart.” How appropriate that warning is. We ask why, while we have an aversion or horror for the same old solution.

But the story of Littleton, the story of Lancaster County, the story of Virginia Tech, in an extraordinary way, has brought to light the power of the same old thing. Once again, God conquered not in spite of the dark mystery of evil, but conquered through it. Emerging from the ashes of such stories are the Miltons who walk in lowly service and whose souls are like shining stars -- the pastors who shepherd the Rachel Scotts and the Cassie Bernals, the professors who nurture truth in a world that would have it sacrificed, and the brave who stand out when many of us would shrink away. The world has need of them. They guard the souls of those who can stare into the guns of murderers and say, “Yes, I believe in Jesus Christ,” and die as an act of worship.

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God On Trial: He Suffers With Us

PBS stations ran a deeply sobering film in 2008 that is a must-see for people of faith. Called GOD ON TRIAL, the film tells the story of a group of Jewish inmates at Auschwitz who don’t understand why God seems indifferent to their suffering. (Because of profanity, disturbing images, and other elements, the film is not suitable for children.)

The film begins on the “day of selection,” on which some of the prisoners are chosen for extermination to make room for more prisoners. As the chosen ones await their fate, though some of the prisoners insist that God is still with them and that “suffering is a part of God’s plan,” many others feel abandoned and bitter. A young man named Moche complains, “[God] should be here, not us.... We should put [Him] on trial; then maybe He’ll hear us.”

So the prisoners decide to bring a charge of “breach of contract” against God for breaking His covenant with the Jewish people. What follows is a compelling exploration of suffering, sin, and faith.

An older man named Kuhn insists, “This is a test of our faith.... The point is to keep faith.” He even suggests that the Jews have broken the covenant themselves by forgetting their Scriptures and disobeying God’s law. But as Kuhn’s son Mordechai points out, the new prisoners who have just arrived are devout followers of the Torah, and yet they’re being punished along with the Jews who have lapsed from their faith.

The arguments go on and on, covering such subjects as what crime they might have committed, whether the punishment is proportionate, why their torturers thrive if God is just, and whether there might be some possible redemption or purification that will come from their suffering — the kind of questions that people of faith have always wrestled with. They even face the possibility that God has withdrawn His favor from them and made a new covenant with the Nazis.

The arguments are hard to hear and the film is very hard to watch. Not because we haven’t heard arguments against God before — many of us have been hearing them and debating them for years — but because we hear them in a situation like this, among men who have so much at stake. As one character remarks, appeals to reason mean little in a world that seems to be run by madness.

But this makes it all the more meaningful when, even though they cannot understand God, they realize how desperately they need Him. One young father who had his three little boys taken from him surprisingly speaks in favor of God: “I know He is here, even though I don’t understand Him.... Maybe God is suffering with us.” Even when they feel furthest from Him, God is embodied in the sacrificial love of some of the prisoners.

I don’t want to give away too much here, but I recommend that you watch the film if it airs on your local PBS station, or pick up a copy of the DVD, which will be released in January. Consider watching it with your church group or a close circle of friends. Don’t be afraid to wrestle with the emotionally painful and intellectually challenging questions about God and suffering — and how it could be, possibly, that God suffers with us.

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Is It the Will of God?

Job 22:16

Dr. William Sloan Coffin of New York’s Riverside Church said this in the April 20, 1984, Lutheran Standard after the death of his son, Alex:

The night after Alex died, I was sitting in the living room of my sister’s house outside of Boston, when a middle-aged lady came in, shook her head when she saw me and said, “I just don’t understand the will of God.” Instantly, I was up and in hot pursuit, swarming all over her. “I’ll say you don’t, lady!!” I said. (I knew the anger would do me good, and the instruction to her was long overdue.)

I continued, “Do you think it was the will of God that Alex never fixed that lousy windshield wiper of his, that he was probably driving too fast in such a storm, that he probably had had a couple of ‘frosties’ too many? Do you think it is God’s will that there are no street lights along that stretch of road, and no guard rails separating the road and Boston Harbor?”

Nothing so infuriates me as the incapacity of seemingly intelligent people to get it through their heads that God doesn’t go around this world with His fingers on triggers, His fist around knives, His hands on steering wheels. God is against all unnatural deaths. And Christ spent an inordinate amount of time delivering people from paralysis, insanity, leprosy and muteness. As Alex’s younger brother put it simply, standing at the head of the casket: “You blew it buddy. You blew it.”

The one thing that should never be said when someone dies is, “It is the will of God.” Never do we know enough to say that. My consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex die; that when the waves closed over the sinking car, God’s was the first of all our hearts to break.

Sermon: Do Our Problems Have A Purpose?

Deuteronomy 8:1

Sermon on handling problems. Deuteronomy 8:1-6

DO OUR PROBLEMS HAVE A PURPOSE?

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I. Everybody's got problems.

II. Problems don't come out of nowhere.

A. We often attribute them to bad luck.

B. Bad choices by us.

III. Four possible purposes of problems.

A. Problems can show where we are weak. 8:2

B. Problems can be intended to humble us. 8:3

C. Problems can increase our faith. 8:4

D. Problems can mold us into a stronger Christian.

IV. Now what?

A. Identifying the reason for problems is only half of it.

B. How people cope.

V. We don't have to know what it all means.

A. We don't need explanations - we need hope.

B. We have a Savior who has been where we are.

What Problems Reveal About God

Job 1:12

Throughout Scripture we read of individuals discovering new dimensions of God’s faithfulness and character in the midst of their trials. That doesn’t mean they never questioned “Why?”

Asking “Why?” is a normal human response to troubles, but God is not put off by that question. It may be a starting point for a dialogue with God that opens doors to a renewed understanding of His plan for your life. There is something about the hour of necessity that sharpens our wits and focuses our attention like no other. The moments in which we need God the most are the moments when our eyes and ears will be most attuned to Him. What do we learn about God during times of adversity or pain? We either learn or are reminded that:

· God gives permission. To understand this dimension of God – we discover and acknowledge that He is in control of all things and nothing happens outside of His will. Therefore, if trouble enters our life, God knows about it. The clearest example of this is found in Job. Satan wanted to afflict Job but had to ask God for permission, which He granted – with limits (Job 1:12; 2:6). Those limits are what Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians 10:13: God “will not allow you to be tempted [tested] beyond what you are able.” Once you understand that your troubles are not unknown to God, it throws a whole different light on the subject in terms of purpose: “God, what is the purpose of this trouble in my life?”

· God has plans. The apostle Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles (Acts 9:15-16) who, by grace were being invited to share in the New Covenant blessings of Israel. So, how better for the “apostle of grace” to learn about grace than to be put in a painful position where he needed grace to endure? That was God’s plan for Paul: “And He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness’” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Through adversity Paul learned to “take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake” ... and found “when I am weak, then I am strong” (verse 10).

· God has purposes. When God’s permission and plans result in pain in our life, we immediately want to know, “How long?” (And we are not alone; the psalmists asked that question fourteen times.) From Genesis 3 through Revelation 20, time is a factor on earth – but only for us. God is not governed by time – He sees our lives through His eternal purpose. When His purpose in our life is accomplished, the circumstances will change. Through this time of waiting on God, we learn to trust His purposes (Isaiah 55:8-11).

· God is powerful. The most important thing to remember in the midst of a trial is that we are loved by God. Nothing, Paul wrote, can “separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:39). There are powerful forces and events working to separate us from His love: tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword, death, life, spiritual beings and more (verses 35-38). But God is more powerful than any adversity that can come against us; through His powerful presence in our lives, we are overcomers!

Whatever trouble you are experiencing today, know that the God of the universe is with you. You are not alone, you are not forsaken, and you are not forgotten. Problems reveal His presence like no other reality in our lives. Don’t be discouraged or dismayed. “Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart, all you who hope in the Lord” (Psalm 31:24).

When the Wicked Prosper

Psalms 73

She was weeping over the phone. Grief, anger and frustration were pouring out of her as she told me her latest news.

Her husband of over 30 years had left her for another woman. At one time he had been a deacon in their church, a respected spiritual leader. He had been a stellar dad, good friend of many and successful businessman with a good name. But his spiritual interests had evaporated over the past several years and his heart had grown cold. The divorce was acrimonious and drawn out, and she was beyond weary and devastated by it all.

But that wasn’t the cause of her current anguish. She had just heard that he had already married the other woman, been promoted in his job, was traveling on exotic trips and had even returned to church.

She was struggling with the age-old question: If he was so wrong to leave her, then why was his life going so well? She, on the other hand, was left to deal with brokenhearted children, financial stresses and the humiliation of it all. Where was God in all this? Why was his life going so well while hers was in such disarray?

As I listened, I was reminded of Psalm 73. Asaph, the author, asked the very same questions my friend was asking. She was, and is, living in Psalm 73. Look at the pattern:

In the first two verses, Asaph affirms his faith in God’s goodness but then confesses that his faith is faltering. He is troubled because he sees the wicked (unbelievers or unrepentant) living in ease, wealth and leisure. He can’t reconcile what he sees with what is taught in the Law -- the promises of blessings to the obedient and judgment on the disobedient.

Asaph then details his complaints (verses 4–12): He is envious of their “prosperity” (“shalom” in the Hebrew); they are healthy, problem-free, boastful of their possessions, thoroughly corrupt and have no mercy on the poor. And Asaph isn’t the only one troubled by all of this. God’s people are confused also, asking if He even notices what is happening in their world (verses 10–11.)

He takes his frustration a step further by asking: What good has it done him to keep an obedient heart? All he has is trouble and pain. If that’s not bad enough, he feels constrained to keep these observations to himself because he has influence with God’s people as a leader. By verse 16, he is ready to throw in the towel and be done with it all.

But the psalm abruptly pivots in verse 17, with a drastic change of focus. Asaph found himself in God’s “sanctuary,” which most likely was the Temple, the dwelling place of God’s glory. Temple worship consisted of reading the Law, singing, worship and prayer. What happened to him there? His heart was softened. His attention was drawn away from the wicked to the glory and majesty of God. His focus changed from “them” to himself and God. He was no longer contrasting the wicked with the good, but looking at God alone.

We can almost hear Asaph saying, “What was I thinking?” He confessed his bitterness, his foolishness, and recounted the spiritual blessings that were his “glorious destiny.” Verse 28 sums up his new perspective: How good it is to be near God! (NLT). Note that the psalmist ends up in the same place he began -- affirming the goodness of God.

My friend, just like Asaph, has discovered the life-giving mindset of being in “the sanctuary” -- being still and entering into God’s presence. Once there, her thinking is transformed and her spirit is made strong, just as Asaph’s was.

Occasionally I get a text from her, saying she has been in “the sanctuary.” Living in the psalm has carried my friend through dark days and is a continual source of strength for her. Watching her and learning from her faith struggle has sharpened me -- and driven me to Psalms time and time again.

There are more people than we know in our churches who struggle with injustices, just as my friend has. While their issues may not be marriage-related, the principle is the same. Turning our eyes toward God and off of others brings us a fresh assurance of His presence and eternal graces toward those who trust Him and seek to live in His sanctuary.

Blame God

Luke 11:50

In his Church & Culture blog, James Emery White shares this: “If all else fails in passing blame, there’s always God.

“The author Philip Yancey writes of being contacted by a television producer after the death of Princess Diana to appear on a show and explain how God could have possibly allowed such a tragic accident. ‘Could it have had something to do with a drunk driver going 90 miles an hour in a narrow tunnel?,’ he asked the producer. ‘How, exactly, was God involved?’

“From this, Yancey reflected on the pervasive nature of the mindset that our actions are actually an indictment of God. Such as when boxer Ray ‘Boom Boom’ Mancini killed a Korean boxer in a match, the athlete said in a press conference, ‘Sometimes I wonder why God does the things He does.’

“In a letter to a Christian family therapist, a young woman told of dating a man and becoming pregnant. She wanted to know why God allowed that to happen to her.

“In her official confession, when South Carolina mother Susan Smith pushed her two sons into a lake to drown, she said that as she did it, she went running after the car as it sped down the ramp screaming, ‘Oh God! Oh God, no! Why did You let this happen!’

“Yancey raises the decisive question by asking, ‘What exactly was the role God played in a boxer pummeling his opponent, a teenager abandoning her virtue, or a mother drowning her children?’ God let us choose, and we did; and our choices have brought continual pain and heartache and destruction. Our self-destructive bent has seemed to know no bounds.”

The Danger of Asking God 'Why Me?'

Job 42

When I was diagnosed with cancer, the question “Why me?” was a natural one.

Later, when I survived but others with the same kind of cancer died, I also had to ask, “Why me?”

Suffering and death seem random, senseless.

The recent Aurora, Colorado, shootings — in which some people were spared and others lost — is the latest, vivid example of this, but there are plenty of others every day: from casualties in the Syria uprising to victims of accidents on American roads. Tsunamis, tornadoes, household accidents - the list is long.

As a minister, I’ve spent countless hours with suffering people crying: “Why did God let this happen?” In general I hear four answers to this question. Each is wrong, or at least inadequate.

The first answer is “I guess this proves there is no God.” The problem with this thinking is that the problem of senseless suffering does not go away if you abandon belief in God.

In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said that if there was no higher divine law, there would be no way to tell if any particular human law was unjust. Likewise, if there is no God, then why do we have a sense of outrage and horror when suffering and tragedy occur? The strong eat the weak, there is no meaning, so why not?

Friedrich Nietzsche exemplified that idea. When the atheist Nietzsche heard that a natural disaster had destroyed Java in 1883, he wrote a friend: “Two-hundred-thousand wiped out at a stroke — how magnificent!”

Because there is no God, Nietzsche said, all value judgments are arbitrary. All definitions of justice are just the results of your culture or temperament.

As different as they were, King and Nietzsche agreed on this point. If there is no God or higher divine law then violence is perfectly natural.

So abandoning belief in God doesn’t help with the problem of suffering at all.

The second response to suffering is: “While there is a God, he’s not completely in control of everything. He couldn’t stop this.”

But that kind of God doesn’t really fit our definition of “God.” So that thinking hardly helps us with reconciling God and suffering.

The third answer to the worst kind of suffering – seemingly senseless death – is: “God saves some people and lets others die because he favors and rewards good people.”

But the Bible forcefully rejects the idea that people who suffer more are worse people than those who are spared suffering.

This was the self-righteous premise of Job’s friends in that great Old Testament book. They sat around Job, who was experiencing one sorrow after another, and said “The reason this is happening to you and not us is because we are living right and you are not.”

At the end of the book, God expresses his fury at Job’s “miserable comforters.” The world is too fallen and deeply broken to fall into neat patterns of good people having good lives and bad people having bad lives.

The fourth answer to suffering in the face of an all-powerful God is that God knows what he’s doing, so be quiet and trust him.

This is partly right, but inadequate. It is inadequate because it is cold and because the Bible gives us more with which to face the terrors of life.

God did not create a world with death and evil in it. It is the result of humankind turning away from him. We were put into this world to live wholly for him, and when instead we began to live for ourselves everything in our created reality began to fall apart, physically, socially and spiritually. Everything became subject to decay.

But God did not abandon us. Only Christianity of all the world’s major religions teaches that God came to Earth in Jesus Christ and became subject to suffering and death himself, dying on the cross to take the punishment our sins deserved, so that someday he can return to Earth to end all suffering without ending us.

Do you see what this means? We don’t know the reason God allows evil and suffering to continue, or why it is so random, but now at least we know what the reason isn’t, what it can’t be.

It can’t be that he doesn’t love us. It can’t be that he doesn’t care. He is so committed to our ultimate happiness that he was willing to plunge into the greatest depths of suffering himself.

Someone might say, “But that’s only half an answer to the question ‘Why?’” Yes, but it is the half that we need. If God actually explained all the reasons why he allows things to happen as they do, it would be too much for our finite brains.

What we truly need is what little children need. They can’t understand most of what their parents allow and disallow for them. They need to know their parents love them and can be trusted. We need to know the same thing about God.

________

Timothy Keller is senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York.

Does the Bible Promise Us A Fair Life?

Luke 17:3

Does the Bible promise us a fair life?

No.

An all-too-common question that is asked by believers and non-believers alike is, “Why me?”

Most of us try to be good people, usually making an effort to do the right thing, so when devastating events occur in our lives, we often blame God. In these moments, some turn to Him and some turn away. When people aren’t very familiar with Scripture, they assume that the Bible promises peace, love, and joy for all Christians, when in reality, that’s not the case at all.

“There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: righteous men who get what the wicked deserve, and wicked men who get what the righteous deserve.” (Ecclesiastes 8:14)

Sin is responsible for this. We are granted free will and we are all corrupt (even as Christians) because we are all fallen, so no one is exempt from pain.

God does tell us, however, to, “Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.” - Luke 17:3-4

He is saying that no matter what, we need to forgive others when they ask for our forgiveness. Even when we are repeatedly hurt by some people, forgiveness is still more important than holding on to the pain that they have inflicted. I wouldn’t say that sounds very fair either, but hey, the Bible never said, “Life is fair.” It did say, though,”And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household,”” - Acts 16:31

To me, that sounds like the best promise that we could have.

Why? [2 versions]

Job 42

On February 15, 1947 Glenn Chambers boarded a plane bound for Quito, Ecuador to begin his ministry in missionary broadcasting. But he never arrived. In a horrible moment, the plane carrying Chambers crashed into a mountain peak and spiraled downward.

Later it was learned that before leaving the Miami airport, Chambers wanted to write his mother a letter. All he could find for stationery was a page of advertising on which was written the single word “WHY?” Around that word he hastily scribbled a final note.

After Chambers’s mother learned of her son’s death, his letter arrived. She opened the envelope, took out the paper, and unfolded it. Staring her in the face was the questions “WHY?”

No doubt this was the questions Jesus’ disciples asked when He was arrested, tried, and crucified. And it was probably the questions Joseph of Arimathea asked himself as he approached Pilate and requested the Lord’s body. It must have nagged at him as he wrapped the body in a linen cloth, carried it to his own freshly hewn tomb, and rolled the massive stone into its groove over the tomb’s mouth. In the face of his grief, Joseph carried on. He did what he knew he had to do. None of Jesus’ relatives were in a position to claim His body for burial, for they were all Galileans and none of them possessed a tomb in Jerusalem. The disciples weren’t around to help either. But there was another reason for Joseph’s act of love.

In Isaiah 53:9, God directed the prophet to record an important detail about the death of His Messiah. The One who had no place to lay His head would be buried in a rich man’s tomb.Joseph probably didn’t realize that his act fulfilled prophecy. The full answer to the why of Jesus’ death was also several days away for Joseph and the others. All he knew was that he was now a disciple of Jesus -- and that was enough to motivate his gift of love.

=============================

From the Nick Lica collection:

SUFFERING

(ASKING WHY?)

The sound was deafening. Although no one was near enough to hear it, it ultimately echoed around the world. None of the passengers in the DC-4 ever knew what happened; they died instantly. That was February 15, 1947. The Avianca Airline flight bound for Quito, Equador, crashed clumsily into the 14,000 foot-high towering peak of El Tablazo not far from Bogota. Then it dropped, a flaming mass of metal, into a ravine far below. A young New Yorker, Glenn Chambers, was one of its victims. He planned to begin a ministry with the Voice of the Andes, a lifelong dream that suddenly aborted into a nightmare.

Before leaving the Miami Airport earlier that day, Chambers hurriedly dashed off a note to his mom on a piece of paper he found on the floor of the terminal. That scrap of paper was once a printed piece of advertisement with the single word WHY sprawled across the center. But between the mailing and the delivery of that note, Chambers was killed. When the letter did arrive, there staring up at his mom was the haunting question--Why? Of all the questions it is the most searching, the most tormenting. No single truth removes the need to ask Why? Like this one. Here it is:

God is too kind to do anything cruel…Too wise to make a mistake…Too deep to explain Himself.

Mrs. Chambers stopped asking Why?…when she saw the Who behind he scene. All other sounds are muffled when we claim His absolute sovereignty. Even the deafening sound of a crashing DC-4.

The Tale Of The Tardy Oxcart

Charles R. Swindoll, Word, pp. 245-246.

Yet I Will Rejoice In the Lord

Job 42

Minor Prophets series. Habakkuk and all-powerful God vs. caring God.

1. Habakkuk is obscure yet important.

2. Prophet is angry at injustice.

a. God will punish Israel with Babylonians.

b. Prophet feels this would be even more unjust.

3. How people get angry with God.

a. Rabbi Kushner and "When Bad Things Happen to Good People."

b. Dilemma of book of Job.

4. God's answer.

a. Judgment is selective.

b. Instruments of judgment will be judged in turn.

c. God is still in charge.

d. Faith is required by us.

5. Habakkuk doesn't get to see fulfillment.

a. Yet he had peace anyway.

1> Many require their faith to "work" or they abandon it.

b. With salvation we can always rejoice in God.

c. We can learn deeper faith through hard times.

"The Weaver"

Job 3:23

Poem entitled, "The Weaver" :

My life is but a weaving between my Lord and me,

I cannot choose the colors; He worketh steadily.

Oftimes He weaveth sorrow, and in my foolish pride

Forget He sees the upper and I, the underside.

Not till the loom is silent and the shuttles cease to fly

Shall God unroll the canvas and explain the reason why.

The dark threads are as needful in the Weaver's skillful hand,

As the threads of gold and silver in the pattern He has planned.

It Could Have Been Much Worse

Genesis 50:20

By now almost everyone has heard of the tragedy that took place on Sept. 15, when a gunman entered Wedgwood Baptist Church and killed 7 people and injured 7 others before taking his own life. That morning had been the day of “See You at the Pole,” when students gather around their flagpole in the morning to pray for their school and nation.

What the media hasn’t reported, however, is how God has been so evident, both during and after the shooting. He has done amazing works!

Before The Shooting:

Our pastor, Brother Al, had prayed that God would do whatever it took to expand the ministry of Wedgwood Baptist Church. Our church is one that is used as a model of how NOT to pick a location, because no one in the world can find it. Now almost everyone in the world knows exactly where it is. Evidence of God’s Control During The Shooting:

To enter the church, the gunman walked past our children’s playground, which should have been full of kids, but for some reason every single children’s and preschool class was running late. No one had made it to the playground yet.

He fired over 100 bullets into a crowd of over 400, but only 14 people were hit.

He did not shoot the over 60 bullets he still had with him.

The bottom fell off of the pipe bomb he threw, and the bomb landed without ever exploding.

One of the youth that was wounded (she was shielding a disabled friend with her body) has scoliosis. The curve in her spine directed the bullet away from major organs, saving her from serious injury.

Because the first 911 call came in on a police radio, emergency vehicles were dispatched immediately, without spending precious time to verify that call was real.

One of the people in the church at the time was a paramedic, and he was able to stop bleeding and stabilize injured people before the emergency crews arrived.

Leaders were able to get the children out of the building without the kids having to see any victims or any of the mess.

Each children’s worker stayed with his/her class even though they all had children elsewhere in the building, and some had teens in the sanctuary. Not one worker left his or her post.

None of the adults who died have children.

All 7 victims were not just Christians, but bold Christians who were passionate about their faith. “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is not being done, the saving of many lives.” (Genesis 50:20) Or, what God has done since the shooting:

Many denominations have pulled together to offer help and support. One example is the United Methodist Church who sent 15 people the following Sunday to cover our childcare. They didn’t want any church members to have to miss the service because they were taking care of the children.

A church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, drove over 5 hours just so they could march around our church and pray during our Sunday morning services.

The Fort Worth Police Dept. planted flowers in the flower beds before we reentered the sanctuary to worship.

We have received over 10,000 emails, 5000 cards, and $60,000 from all over the world

Al Meredith, our pastor has had the microphone in his face continually and has over and over given an outstanding answer to the reason for our hope. He presented the gospel beautifully on Larry King Live when prompted by a question asked by Vice President Al Gore.

Because of the live news coverage and interviews, over 200 million people have heard the gospel because of this tragedy.

Fifteen thousand turned out for a community wide service at TCU football stadium. Brother Al gave a very serious challenging message calling for a day of fasting and heart searching (Monday the 20th). The service was broadcast live in its entirety on WBAP 820 which is a news station that covers most of north Texas. This same news station has replayed our pastor’s first press conference due to people calling in and requesting to hear his comforting words again. CNN also broadcast the memorial service live. Amazingly, because one of the victim’s families lives and works in Saudi Arabia, that country allowed the service to be broadcast there as well. In Saudi Arabia it is illegal to say the name of Jesus on the street.

Because of that same CNN broadcast, 35 people in Japan gave their lives to Christ

When President Clinton finally got through to him, Brother Al ended their conversation by praying, after gaining permission, for the Clinton family. At several schools, students met around their flagpoles the next day. At one school 25 students accepted Christ, and 110 at another.

A teacher led 22 students to Christ in her classroom.

Christian teachers all over North Texas have been able to share with their classes because the students are asking questions about their teachers’ faith.

In Burleson, prayers and Scripture are being said over the intercom

On the east coast, where “See You at the Pole” was delayed because of the hurricane, record numbers of kids showed up to pray.

Governor Bush and the Fort Worth mayor quietly came to our pastor’s home while the staff were meeting and praying and joined in the prayer meeting. This was not political! Only those who are close to staff members heard about this; the media never knew.

Governor Bush has visited with our pastor several times, and Brother Al has had an impact on him. Just think of the influence our pastor could have if Governor Bush is the next president!

A caller to an area Christian radio station said that he didn’t know what those people had but he wanted it. The DJ proceeded to lead him to Christ. Many notes left in front of the church contain the same sentiment. Those who don’t know Jesus want what we have!

The church has received so many emails asking us how we are able to have hope and continue on. There are teams of church member volunteers responding to these emails.

My friend Jodi has been praying for her husband for years. She and their 4-yr-old daughter were at the church that night. 3 days ago Scott gave his life to Christ.

We have had over 70,000 hits on our web page which displays the plan of salvation in multiple languages.

Many members at Wedgwood Baptist are healing broken relationships within the body and experiencing spiritual renewal. These are just a few of the miracles that are happening. God’s grace is almost overwhelming. Every time the gunman fired a bullet, he intended to take a life. Yet God turned that around and saved several lives for each bullet fired. The faith of those who died has been multiplied many times over.

“I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world..” Romans 1:8

________

You may want to refer to the church’s website for further information http://www.wedgwoodbc.org/wedgupdate.htm

Why? [2 versions]

Job 42

On February 15, 1947 Glenn Chambers boarded a plane bound for Quito, Ecuador to begin his ministry in missionary broadcasting. But he never arrived. In a horrible moment, the plane carrying Chambers crashed into a mountain peak and spiraled downward.

Later it was learned that before leaving the Miami airport, Chambers wanted to write his mother a letter. All he could find for stationery was a page of advertising on which was written the single word “WHY?” Around that word he hastily scribbled a final note.

After Chambers’s mother learned of her son’s death, his letter arrived. She opened the envelope, took out the paper, and unfolded it. Staring her in the face was the questions “WHY?”

No doubt this was the questions Jesus’ disciples asked when He was arrested, tried, and crucified. And it was probably the questions Joseph of Arimathea asked himself as he approached Pilate and requested the Lord’s body. It must have nagged at him as he wrapped the body in a linen cloth, carried it to his own freshly hewn tomb, and rolled the massive stone into its groove over the tomb’s mouth. In the face of his grief, Joseph carried on. He did what he knew he had to do. None of Jesus’ relatives were in a position to claim His body for burial, for they were all Galileans and none of them possessed a tomb in Jerusalem. The disciples weren’t around to help either. But there was another reason for Joseph’s act of love.

In Isaiah 53:9, God directed the prophet to record an important detail about the death of His Messiah. The One who had no place to lay His head would be buried in a rich man’s tomb.Joseph probably didn’t realize that his act fulfilled prophecy. The full answer to the why of Jesus’ death was also several days away for Joseph and the others. All he knew was that he was now a disciple of Jesus -- and that was enough to motivate his gift of love.

=============================

From the Nick Lica collection:

SUFFERING

(ASKING WHY?)

The sound was deafening. Although no one was near enough to hear it, it ultimately echoed around the world. None of the passengers in the DC-4 ever knew what happened; they died instantly. That was February 15, 1947. The Avianca Airline flight bound for Quito, Equador, crashed clumsily into the 14,000 foot-high towering peak of El Tablazo not far from Bogota. Then it dropped, a flaming mass of metal, into a ravine far below. A young New Yorker, Glenn Chambers, was one of its victims. He planned to begin a ministry with the Voice of the Andes, a lifelong dream that suddenly aborted into a nightmare.

Before leaving the Miami Airport earlier that day, Chambers hurriedly dashed off a note to his mom on a piece of paper he found on the floor of the terminal. That scrap of paper was once a printed piece of advertisement with the single word WHY sprawled across the center. But between the mailing and the delivery of that note, Chambers was killed. When the letter did arrive, there staring up at his mom was the haunting question--Why? Of all the questions it is the most searching, the most tormenting. No single truth removes the need to ask Why? Like this one. Here it is:

God is too kind to do anything cruel…Too wise to make a mistake…Too deep to explain Himself.

Mrs. Chambers stopped asking Why?…when she saw the Who behind he scene. All other sounds are muffled when we claim His absolute sovereignty. Even the deafening sound of a crashing DC-4.

The Tale Of The Tardy Oxcart

Charles R. Swindoll, Word, pp. 245-246.

Job's Faulty Assumptions

Job 42

Consider again the ancient figure Job. Even in his pain he never lost sight of the fact that God was very much in control. But, you know, he did have a struggle. He had always assumed that if you are good you will be blessed and if you are bad you will be cursed. Why, when he had been good, was he being cursed?

Suffering might not square well with our assumptions either. The theological lenses through which Job viewed his agony drastically shaped his response to his troubles. We, too, have a particular perspective about how we think that God should behave. Do we presume that pain is punishment? Even further, might we assume that God owes us happiness - immediate and uninterrupted?

Listen to the words of Malcolm Muggeridge:

Contrary to what might be expected, I look back on experiences

that at the time seemed especially desolating and painful, with

particular satisfaction. Indeed, I can say with complete

truthfulness that everything I have learned in my seventy-five

years in this world, everything that has truly enhanced and

enlightened my existence, has been through affliction and not

through happiness, whether pursued or attained. In other words,

if it ever were to be possible to eliminate affliction from our

earthly existence by means of some drug or other medical mumbo

jumbo...the result would not be to make life delectable, but to

make it too banal or trivial to be endurable. This of course is

what the cross signifies, and it is the cross more than anything

else, that has called me inexorably to Christ. (1)

What is he saying? He is reminding us that sometimes in moments when we thought all was lost, we end up finding out that some of life’s greatest truths were found.

You see dear friend, one of the arguments of Christian philosophers is that that God has a morally justifiable reason for allowing suffering. And if we see in the midst of our pain that we are not sovereign, that alone is a vital lesson for proud humanity. But there is more. The Cross of Jesus Christ is the quintessential expression of unjust suffering. In the midst of his crucifixion He prayed for the forgiveness of His tormentors. Life was mended by God’s grace at the point when all else seemed broken. Could it be possible that in the midst of our pain some of the greatest wealth of God's grace can be experienced. Pause and take note that even in your life, a sudden tragedy may be a call to you to stop you long enough that you might listen to Him and see your life through His lenses, not yours.

_________________________