When God does nothing

There is an awful story in the Gospel of Mark which relates the death of John the Baptist.  It is a very confronting story.  It’s confronting, because of the pictures it gives us of betrayal, debauchery, revenge, hatred, and death.  We have this terrible picture of Herod and his family, taking their revenge on John, because he dared to speak out against their moral discrepancy. It’s confronting because Jesus appears to do nothing to intervene. 

This is the story of one of the greatest juxtapositions in the whole bible: The Herald of the Lord sacrificed for the whims of a deceitful woman and her spineless husband.  It is a story of the risks we take  when we choose to follow Christ.

John, the cousin of Jesus;  the one whose voice in the wilderness, foretold of his coming. Jesus’ ministry starts after John is arrested.  While John is in prison, Jesus is about and about preaching and healing. Let’s press the rewind button a little bit, and go back to before John’s death. 

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?"

John is in prison, no doubt anticipating his own execution.  And he hears what Jesus is doing, and sends the disciples to ask Jesus this question. “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?".  After his own glorious ministry, as the prophet appointed to proclaim the Christ’s coming, he is plagued by doubts, it seems. What has happened to the glorious vision of Isaiah, where the eyes of the blind are opened, the ears of the deaf are unstopped, the lame leap and the tongue of the dumb sings for joy?  It must seem to John, that having foretold these things, he wasn’t going to be around to see it. Instead, he’s captured and held on the whim of a woman with whom he had gone into battle on many occasions over moral issues.  It’s the old story of a good man to whom bad things happen.

Then we have Herod. Let’s look at him, his family for a minute. According to most scholars, the Herod that is spoken of in this reading is a son of Herod the Great, a cruel and hated despot who oversaw the entire Palestinian region.  When Herod the Great died (in 4 B.C.); Rome split his region into four areas and placed the Northwest area of Galilee under the rule of his son, Herod Antipas.

If Herod the Great was a maniacal, violent despot, then Antipas the son, was the cowering survivor who outlived his father.  A brief study of his character reveals that he maintained his position not with strength but by connivance and manipulation.  We know this because of his hesitation to have John executed immediately when John first insulted his wife.  He’s scheming for the way out of his predicament so he comes out of it unscathed.  The historian, Josephus, tells how he won his seat by sniveling before Rome and later lost it in like manner.  He’s an amoral “yes man”, whose first concern is always his own position of power and comfort. Scripture tells us that he stole his half-brother’s wife (she was also his cousin) and appeased her by sinking to her frivolous whims while also lusting for his stepdaughter (who was also his niece).  He is a sleazy man.  He, the manipulator, is also manipulated by his wife.  He is weakness personified. 

This is the man, who so abused his authority against the daring, devoted John the Baptist by ordering his beheading.  This is the picture we have of the strutting weakling Antipas, who was responsible for Christ’s death too.  He scorned and mocked and thought he would have the last word. 

All of this background is very interesting and helpful, but we might ask, “why was it included?”  Why does the death of John include all this detail about Herod and his family?  Why do the preceding chapters tell us of John’s question to Jesus from the gloom of his prison cell?  Where’s the good news in all this?

There is always the danger in religious circles to think that if you’re on God’s Team then everything will be great. You’ll be healthy, wealthy, and wise. God will heal every disease and conquer every foe.  Well…not if you’re John the Baptist. If you’re John you’ll be the victim of a little slip of a girl, her scheming mother, an ineffectual puppet ruler, and your head will be served on a platter.

The sobering reality is that even the very best of us can be victim to the very worst, and sometimes even to the very worst in other people. How many have heard of Clunes Mathison?  He was born at Stanley, near Beechworth, in 1883. His parents, had six children, but only Clunes reached the age of 10; moreover, when he was 12 his father, too, died of illness. The close experience of sickness and suffering influenced the young Mathison and he went on to be a brilliant doctor.  When the first world war came, he served as the 5^th Battalion’s Doctor on 25^th April 1915 at Gallipoli.  He survived the landing, and went from there to Helles where he set up a medical post in a creek bed.  After the 5^th charged towards, Krithia, Mathison returned on May 9 to the aid post he had established in a creek bed. He was getting dressed during the afternoon, when a Turkish bullet fired from far away fell to earth and struck him on the head.  He died 9 days later. He’d survived the hideous Gallipoli landing but was struck down by a freak bullet.  Not only did Australia loose a good man, but also a brilliant Doctor.  He was only 34. But I can’t help but think of his Mum.  She lost all her children, except this one;  she lost her husband and then her  only remaining child marches off to war and is killed by a stray bullet, way behind the battle front.  Life is not always fair. This story is confronting because it tears at the fabric of our belief that God will intervene, fix, heal, save.  But he didn’t save Clunes Mathison, or his mother from the crushing grief of multiple losses.  And he didn’t save John the Baptist.  That’s why it’s such a confronting story.

But, these fates aren’t what define us, for even though we suffer and are cut down, we are still God’s.  It’s why we need to keep our lives aligned with the plumb line of our walk with the risen Christ, because sometimes, that’s the only thing that makes any sense.

John’s story challenges us to live with hope in the face of disappointment and the ending of our hopes and dreams. Is our fidelity to God only valid when everything turns out the way we want it to?  How do we understand this story in the light of all the promises God made about hope and joy and the desert blooming, and the afflicted being healed?  Can we step outside the boundaries of our own expectations and let God write his own will and expectations on our hearts?  The truths is, that God’s hope in us, actually becomes stronger, the less hopeful our circumstances are;  he himself becomes our hope, our strength;  we look beyond the things of this life, to a greater hope in the life to come.  And in doing this, we begin to live now, with hope and integrity, even when we are in our own particular prison, whatever that might be.

When the imprisoned John the Baptist queried whether Jesus was the promised Messiah or not - Jesus replied by pointing John to the transformation which was occurring in people's lives. How God's love for the world was being revealed through the way Jesus touched people's lives with healing, compassion, justice and love. So, in a way, John must have realized that his task was done.  He had foretold of such a One, and his prophesy had been fulfilled.  So take heart, because even our suffering, our acceptance of it and our trust in God through it, is how we discover that God is present in all our circumstances;  whether they be joyous ones like, say, the birth of a baby, or terrible ones, like John’s life sentence. God is the God of both situations.  The abundance of happy things, is no more a sign of God’s presence than the desolation;  the constant is God.  We tend to measure God’s presence in any situation by our sense of well-being, and fail to recognise that God is just as present with us in the dungeon, as he is on the mountain top.

Sometimes, like the story of Clunes Mathieson,  the very worst happens.  It’s then we can experience the presence of God.  And let’s remember, it’s not over until the resurrection.  The story of whatever has happened to us here, is not finished until God welcomes, recognises and renews us, on that Resurrection morning.

I hate it when the car breaks down

The car still isn’t fixed.  It broke down on Monday on the way to work and I had to get towed.  Last week it was the engine housing;  this week it’s the computer.

I got stressed when it broke down.  I think my blood pressure went way up – my heart pounded and I had a sort of pain in my chest.  It’s a throwback to breakdowns passed, especially the one when I broke down 3 times in the one journey, with the same problem, on lonely roads, with the kids, night descending, and costing hundreds and hundreds of dollars, which I didn’t really have.  It was a time in my life, year after year, when everything, big and small, went wrong.

Any wonder that when I break down, the anguish of it comes back a bit. I still carry a sort of resentment towards God for all those dark years, when nobody helped; nobody understood, nobody helped me fight my corner.  All God seemed to do was allow more bad things. 

I know His purpose was to make me rely on Him. He let the devil trick and savage me all through those years.  It was like a trek off into the wilds;  so much darkness; so much despair;  so much conflict in every arena of my life. All to a backdrop of grinding hard work frugal living.

Now, here I am still holding the banner of the risen Christ;  still living by the precepts of the  Suffering One.  I’m still on the treadmill of low income and frugal living, with loneliness as my companion.  It’s just how it is.

I guess I know the nature of Christ and what it means to be a Christian, which is a little more founded in reality than those cardboard cut-outs who cry into my puzzled face “I’m off to Paris!  Isn’t God wonderful!”.  (pukeness-making I reckon).

I know what it is to live in the Spirit and soar with the Eagle (spiritually), with the light of God on my back.  I understand that the light and the soaring are perhaps as tangible and real, when I’m trudging through mud, as it is when I’m in a sunny meadow.  The Spirit and the light are the same whatever my circumstances.

The only thing that stops me soaring is that I’m still a frail human being and have become used to the easier path, when I’m not struggling with the pain of divorce or the loss of a son, or even the car breaking down.  I’m like everyone else – I don’t want to have my faith tested with suffering and loss.  It’s easy-peasy being a banner-bearer when nothing much goes wrong. The fact that it has been tested with these things, only makes me more susceptible to little things going wrong. 

To be honest, I don’t know why I’m still on the treadmill of working when I’d rather give up, and the alone-ness gets to me at times.  So when the car broke down the second time, it triggers the puzzled bewilderment which is still a part of me, and I wonder again, just what on earth was the purpose of all the designed and designated suffering?

But I don’t have the energy to rail against it anymore. I’ve resigned myself that this is God’s lot for me now until I reach “Aslan’s country”;  heaven;  the real Life for which this life has been a preparation.

I just hope God hasn’t got any more bloody awful surprised in store.  If He can’t allow good things (and when I’m in my right mind, I know I have many of those), I wish He’d keep the bad to himself.  I do SO get sick of being changed from glory to bloody glory!

I do get angry with God sometimes. But I SO don’t want to “do” anger either, and being thankful is a way to counter anger.  Anger is exhausting, futile, defeating of joy, hard going, depressing and affects no-one except me.

Sometimes too, God seems silent.  He never answers prayers I ask for myself – even when I was at my wit’s end (many times).  It’s the cost of being an Intercessor for others.

Sometimes He seems silent;  the great Silence from Him who supposedly craves our fellowship. Sometimes, I feel like I’m slowly falling out of love with God. I am tired of making the effort, when I so obviously, so fully misunderstand His ways and purposes.  Or, rather, I keep reverting back, like a blueprint I can’t erase, of a Providential, caring Father-figure God.  I expect Him to look out for me;  to be on my side, stick up for me, provide a little help when life robs me of the good crop I’ve sowed.  But that never seems to happen (or when I’m …. Admitting it now…. Depressed…. That’s how it seems)

Instead, when I am thankful to Him for all the positives of some loss He’s allowed, He allows more loss; just to be sure I have been tested enough.  And really, even though I have this idea in my head of a Providential God, what’s actually in my emotional, spiritual self is this silent, testing, hard-hearted God who looks away at my distress, who looked away at the struggle and suffering of Christ on the cross.

So I’m left with this suffering Jesus who must understand what it’s like to be rejected and un-helped by Father God.  I know too, that if I turn away and leave God out of my life, I am unhappy and left exposed, without shields or protection, to the demons of depression, self-pity, anger and despair. (shudder).

So, up I go again, to turn to the light of the “looking-away God” and the unearthly, unfathomable, joyous song of the Sprit, and to the suffering, bewildered, anguished figure on the cross, who said “why have you forsaken me God?”.

And I understand that. And I think “this is the narrow door”

And I go through it again.

After all, God doesn't really promise that nothing bad will happen.

He just promises an unending supply of hope, strength, courage and even joy, to cope with it all.

He will never leave us, or forsake us, actually  The forsaking is not an earthly, tangible, riches, comfort arena. 

It’s a spiritual arena;  He will never leave us to battle our demons;  our struggles;  our doubts, alone. He will never throw us into a spiritual arena which we cannot win over and emerge triumphant and whole.

I just wish I could get that bit through my head. 

What to do when things go wrong; 2 Timothy 1:1-14; Lamentations3:19-26

I’m sure all of you will be familiar with the books “Anne of Green Gables”.  Perhaps the blokes won’t be so familiar with them, but I bet some of the ladies will have read them when they were girls.  Or, the younger generation may have watched the TV movie of the books, made in the 80’s.  My girls loved this;  they watched it over and over.  I too, loved it.  I love a good, happy ending. There’s a bit in the start of that where Anne (who is the heroine) and prone to catastrophe, says to Marilla, who adopts her from the Orphanage where she has spent her early childhood years. Anyway, in this scene, Marilla and Anne are heading off up the stairs after some disaster or other in which Anne has been to blame.  Anne says to Marilla, something like “that’s what I like about going to bed;  when you wake up there’s a new morning, with no mistakes in it yet”. 

And that’s a truth which can serve us well too.  In a way, it’s almost a paraphrase of the reading from Lamentations 3: 19-26.  Let me just read you these few verses again “The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall.  My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me.  But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope;  The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end.  They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. The verses in the whole book of Lamentations must be some of the most harrowing in the bible.

Listen to this from Chapter 1: "Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look around and see.  Is any suffering like my suffering,  that was inflicted on me,  that the LORD brought on me  in the day of his fierce anger? "From on high he sent fire,  sent it down into my bones.  He spread a net for my feet  and turned me back.  He made me desolate,  faint all the day long. "My sins have been bound into a yoke;  by his hands they were woven together. They have come upon my neck and the Lord has sapped my strength.  He has handed me over  to those I cannot withstand.

These are harrowing words;  the writer of them was in a desolate and miserable place.  We’d rather not go there;  it’s too awful;  too uncomfortable.  But life is a precarious and fickle thing;  it rains on the just and the unjust and we wouldn’t be part of humanity if we didn’t experience times when we feel that everything goes wrong, and life becomes difficult;  when the fat hits the fan. If life gets tough enough, we might even question if God really cares for us at all.  It would be natural to do that; the writer of Lamentations did it;  the writer of many of the Psalms also experienced this kind of doubt.

It can be a time when our Sunday School idea of a loving shepherd, always looking after us, is shattered.  It doesn’t make sense;  we have all this bad stuff going on in our lives and where is God.  Why isn’t He doing something?  Why isn’t he picking us up and making it all better?  What do we do when we experience this kind of upheaval?  How do we cope with the difficult stuff? 

I’d like to give you just 4 things we can do:

 

1        The first is we can keep going.  There are heaps of references in the bible about perseverance and endurance:

1 Timothy 4:16:  Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.
Hebrews 10:36:  You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.
James 1:12:  Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.
James 5:11:  As you know, we consider blessed those who have persevered.

I guess this means that sometimes we just have to put our nose to the grindstone and doggedly keep going; to make up our mind to persevere.  We put our feet on the worn path we know, and we walk it, even when we don’t want to.  You might have to do this, for example, when you have young children who need your care and guidance.  I’m sure there were times when my kids were little when I’d much rather have been out in the garden or lazing on the beach, but that wouldn’t have done them much good. There are times in our lives when life will be a slog.   But listen to the verses in Lamentations… God’s mercy is new to us each morning.  His refreshment is always ready to revive us. And keeping on keeping on doesn’t mean we can’t tell God what we feel.  Is our life difficult and fraught with sorrow or hardship?  Keep going, but tell God you’re sick of it;  tell God you wish it was different;  tell God how hard it is.  Remember his mercy and faithfulness are always there. Keep your spiritual eye on Jesus, the perfector of our faith.  He is our example and friend.  Imagine that you are following his lead, placing your feet in the imprint of his footprint as his foot leaves it.  When all around is maybe crumbling, changing; is chaos or unknown we can  keep going, keep plodding.  I say plodding because sometimes life throws us burdens and worries which cause us to plod under the weight of them.

2        The second thing we can do is to keep on praising him and thanking him, despite what else is happening and despite what we are feeling. 1 Thess 5:18 “give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus” How hard is this?!   How can we thank God when we’ve just lost our job, or a loved one has died, or been given terrible news of illness?  How can we praise him just the same in the face of these things?  We are at a low ebb emotionally.  Every thing is bleak.  We stumble and fall, sprawled headlong on to the dirty floor of despair, looking at our circumstances or our loss or our anxiety.  How can we thank God?  This is very difficult and seems to contradict what I’ve just said about telling God what we feel.  Because when things go wrong, we won’t feel like praising or thanking!

But here’s the thing, you can do both.  You can say to God “I feel terrible, but because you’ve said to give thanks in all circumstances”, I will, even though I don’t feel like it. You are God and you own  and control everything;  everything eventually is or will be in subjection to you.  I chose to follow your word and the example of the Christ.  Thank you for the circumstances I’m in”

You can, in the face of awful stuff, actively look for things which are NOT so bad, or are good.  If you’ve lost your job, give thanks that you have some training or experience, which will enable you to get another job; or you might have savings you can fall back on for a while.  Give thanks for our welfare system which will provide for us for a while. How can you give thanks when you’ve lost a loved one?  You can give thanks for that person’s life.  I’m not saying this thanking and praising is easy;  it’s hard finding something good in all circumstances. What happens when we do this though, is that our will becomes stronger and our emotions follow.  Our mind has made the decision, and our emotions follow and it becomes a healing process.  It also takes time;  you can’t give thanks for something bad soon after it’s happened.  But over time, you can. And a word of caution here, this is not a magic bullet; or a wonderful formula;  it won’t make all the bad stuff go away.  You will still wake up in the morning and nothing’s changed, but God’s faithfulness is still there, and you will have placed a brick, to build a set of steps which you climb to overcome whatever has happened to you. You are building a relationship with the living God and will eventually sit atop the mountain of pain or regret or suffering.  And you will have gotten there by giving thanks in all circumstances.

3         The third thing we can do, is keep reading the Bible.  The bible is our instruction manual.  How do we know that God’s faithfulness is new and available to us every morning, if we don’t read it in his word?  How will we know that giving thanks in all things is a step to overcoming, if we don’t read it in the bible?  How do we find the courage to endure unless we find it in the bible?  Even these verses in Lamentations… they are so ominous;  we plough through them and all is gloom and angst.  Then we get to verse 22, (the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases etc) and we come upon them, like emerging from a dark tunnel out on to a grassy bank with a view of the sea beyond.  There is such wisdom and encouragement in the Bible.  If you’re like me, it can also be like eating a dry biscuit on a hot day; not so good.  But please persist.  It’s one of the ways we can stay close to God and a closeness to God is the secret to living a triumphant life.  So, if a set time works for you, then find a set time.  If it’s just when you get a few quiet minutes, then do it that way.  But find those quiet minutes and read the Bible every day.

4        The fourth and final thing we can do is adjust our ideas of how we think of God.  This comes back to what I said at the beginning.  We have a Sunday school image of God as someone who makes things better, looking after us.  And he does, but it isn’t always in the method we think he’ll use.  He uses the good and the bad in what is a fallen world;  a world over which we have scant control. As we negotiate our way around and through the various obstacles and events, we begin to see that God’s blessings to us are always ultimately spiritual ones, for our eternal good, not only for our temporal, physical or immediate enjoyment or comfort. God will always use the bad things to bring eternal good for us.  He will always bring good for evil;  peace after suffering;  relief from angst;  joy for sorrow and in the journey, we learn what’s good for our soul’s health.  This is always what is most important to God – our soul’s well being;  our “end game”;  our spiritual destination.  This is what 2 Tim 1:1 means “for the sake of the promise of life in Christ Jesus”.  That’s spiritual Life, with a capital “L”.   Without it, we can’t cross the great chasm of spiritual death that separates us from God. The constant will be God.  God to enfold us, God to surround us,   God in our speaking, God in our thinking.  God in our sleeping, God in our waking, God in our watching, God in our hoping, God in our lives, God on our lips, God in our souls, God in our hearts. God in our sufficing, God in our slumber, God in our ever-living souls, God in our eternity.  The life we have in Christ Jesus is what stands between us, keeping our faith, our ability to function when the bricks of our soul's house start to crumble through trouble or suffering.  It’s what gives us the victory when the world pushes us around and gives us grief. We can rise again, with the steadfast love of the Lord shining on our heads, new each morning.  Amen.

Ephesians 1:11-23

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ephesians%201:11-23&version=NIV

The thought that always comes to mind when I read these is that they describe a Supreme deity;  a sovereign deity.  Is God sovereign? 

Verse 11 says “we have obtained an inheritance; we are predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to His will”.  These verses relate to salvation – inheritance, and we won’t go down the predestination path today.

I believe God certainly had a broad and definite plan for our salvation.  He willed it,  he brought it about .  So, if he had such a purpose and will in this regard, surely it would stand to reason, He does so too, in relation to what happens to us in other ways too.  The important words here are “purpose and His will”.  He works all things according to his will.  He doesn’t cause bad things to happen, but He manages it, allows it, and uses it to reveal himself to us.  Romans 8:28 declares this …. All things work together for good, for those who love him and are called to his purpose. So this passage paints a picture of a Supreme Loving Being. In these verses, we find the following:

·        Verse 11 describes God as having the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will.  Accomplishes all things;  he decides it and he does it.  All things, not just the nice stuff, but all things, according to his purpose and will.

·        immeasurable power,  verse 19;  immeasurable;  unable to be measured.  That’s the power of God.  These are dimensions which are off our scale

 

·        he raises from the dead, verse 20.  He used physical death for His purpose ie to raise us to a life far above anything we know here. And if he can raise from the dead, then he must have supreme power over everything.

·        He is seated in heaven, above every other authority;  above every other name or dominion.  Unassailable;  power over all below;  power over all that exists;  power over all that ever was and ever will be.

·        He is above every other name in this age and the next

·        He has all things under his feet.

·        Right at the end of the passage, Paul brings this picture of Supremacy full circle.  The One whose purpose is to save us, fills the earth and heaven, is also the One who can, as in Vs 22, be in His church, his body;  us;  not just in community, but dwells personally in us in all his fullness, through the HS.

So we have a picture of a supreme God, Father, son and HS.  And the hard question is “If he is supreme and loving, why does he allow awful terrible, unthinkable things to happen, especially to the very young, the innocent, the vulnerable.  Why does He allow people to be bullied, abused, oppressed;  why does he allow people to suffer?

It seems to me that the terrible things that can happen to us fall into two categories;  firstly, the things that just happen to us, out of the blue, from a seemingly random, unknown source, and secondly, the things that others do to us, which cause us pain or hurt. 

Last year, one of my daughter’s friends was killed in a car accident at.  She was a lovely young Christian woman, just 21;  married just over 12 months. A huge B-double rammed into her as she turned off the road.  On the same highway, there are people transporting drugs;  there are mafia bikie gangs;  there are crooks and pedophiles travelling on that road;  we can’t understand why this young life was taken in an instant.  Why not one of those others? This is one of those things which just seem to happen;  a freak accident that makes no sense.  We find it hard to believe in a Sovereign God who allows this sort of thing to happen.  I don’t think God causes this sort of tragedy, and  I can’t believe God deliberately sends us awful things, for our own good;  that would make him some kind of cosmic sadist.  And I guess, in the face of this type of suffering,  his sovereignty seems a fettered, beaten thing, just mopping up tragedy after the event, by bringing good out of it.  I have no answer for that, except to say that if God’s power was always used to prevent awful stuff, we would already be living in a sort of heaven.

 The second type of suffering is of the type done to us deliberately, by someone else.  Of the two, I’ve found this type harder to cope with.  The random stuff;  the stuff that seems to be nobody’s fault is less personal in a sense, and it’s easier to put it down to some mystery that God has under his care. But deliberate hurt and betrayal at the hands of someone else, is very hard to understand and come to terms with.

I’m sure, for instance, God could have made sure that one of the very many attempts to kill Hitler, succeeded. We could argue that killing him would be descending to the same level as he was.  But there’s also no denying that if one of these attempts had succeeded, especially early in the 1930’s, millions of innocent people would not have died;  war may have been avoided altogether. 

It was really uncanny how many times Hitler escaped assassination.  Perhaps the most concerted was in 1944, when a man named Claus von Stauffenberg made several attempts.  He was backed by a group of about 9000 Nazi resistance fighters.  All his attempts failed for one reason or the other;  there were other people who tried to kill Hitler too, but no-one succeeded.  Some escapes were really uncanny quirks of fate;  On one occasion, a bomb planted in a conference room went off minutes after Hitler had left the room, and he was unharmed.  On another, a bomb was placed in the lectern where he was speaking.  But he, uncharacteristically, cut his speech short and the bomb missed it’s mark.  Perhaps the quirkiest was when a bomb placed in a briefcase under the table where he was seated, went off, but Hitler was unhurt, because one of the people also seated at the table unwittingly pushed the briefcase behind a leg of the table.  The bomb went off, but the stoutness of the oak table protected him from the blast.  Others at the table were killed, but Hitler was unscathed.

I find this baffling;  that this evil man escaped death so many times, yet this lovely young Christian woman, was killed in a freak accident on the highway. Where is God in these matters? 

Why is it that sometimes evil people can go on and on with their plans, seemingly unaffected by the sovereignty of God?  I have no answer except that God cannot make someone behave with compassion and peace if they have made up their minds not to.

During the reign of Hitler, there were two brothers.  One was Hitler’s right hand man, responsible for setting up the concentration camps;  responsible for killing millions of Jews.  His name was Herman Goering.  Herman had a brother called Albert,  and Albert was responsible for saving many Jewish people.  He hated what the Nazi’s were doing to his countrymen.  He and his brother were close, despite their differences in politics and ideals.  Herman liked to show of his power to Albert and so Albert was able to use his brother’s influence and name, to free many Jewish people.  One of these was Franz Lehar.  He wrote “The Merry Widow”(that lovely operetta)  Another was the wonderful singer Joseph Schmidt.  If you haven’t heard of Joseph Schmidt, he was the Austrian equivalent of Peter Dawson.

We are given the power to overcome evil with good.  We are given a choice as to how we will behave.  God will not interfere with that free will.  God is sovereign, but he would not intervene in Herman Goering’s life, or Hitler’s life, even though it would have saved much suffering by innocent people. 

It must seem to us at times, as though God isn’t supreme. And it seems sometimes that evil people always win.  But it’s not the case.  Seasons of evil always come to an end. Consider these words from Ps 73

³For I was envious of the arrogant; I saw the prosperity of the wicked. ⁴For they have no pain; their bodies are sound and sleek. ⁵They are not in trouble as others are; they are not plagued like other people. ⁶Therefore pride is their necklace; violence covers them like a garment. ⁷Their eyes swell out with fatness; their hearts overflow with follies. ⁸They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression. ⁹They set their mouths against heaven, and their tongues range over the earth. ¹⁰Therefore the people turn and praise them, and find no fault in them. ¹¹And they say, “How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?” ¹²Such are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches. ¹³All in vain I have kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. ¹⁴For all day long I have been plagued, and am punished every morning. ¹⁵If I had said, “I will talk on in this way,” I would have been untrue to the circle of your children. ¹⁶But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, ¹⁷until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I perceived their end. ¹⁸Truly you set them in slippery places; you make them fall to ruin. ¹⁹How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors!

I’ll tell you what I believe.  I believe God is sovereign.  I believe that everything is ultimately under His control, even the freak accidents and the illnesses. I think that nothing happens to us, without his saying it’s OK, or not OK.  And if it’s not OK, it doesn’t happen to us. .  I think the world, spiritual and physical, is a broken place;  almost perfect, but subject to imperfection all the time;  full of good people and bad people;  flawed and faulty, who set up flawed and faulty systems and who are at the mercy of their ambitious human nature.   The world is full of people who chose to be evil or selfish or ignorant or uncaring.  The world is also full of people who chose to be a positive force;  who are willing to help and care for others.  There are extreme examples at both ends of the spectrum, and then there’s us common, ordinary folk, who are in the middle. And even the physical world is subject to this fallen state.  Accidents happen; illnesses strike us down seemingly willy-nilly.

This can seem a short, trite answer to this most anguished question..  It’s a fairly unsatisfactory answer when we are faced with our own personal tragedy. 

But for me at least, it is, after the strident, shrieking voice of grief has calmed a little, the answer which makes sense.  God, even through accident and illness knows how many days we have, before we’ve even lived one of them.  We don’t understand it, but then God is God and we are frail humanity.  Of course we don’t understand it.  Because it’s not for us to decide these things.  God judges our hearts and numbers our days. We, his creation, cannot rule over such matters. He is the Alpha and Omega;  he has control over life and death.  We can trust him with this purpose.

When people hurt or bully us, we want God to be an avenging force, stepping in to give us victory over those who seek to destroy us.  We want God to spare us from hurt and suffering.  We want God to cause them to fall into their own traps. 

But the reality is, He often doesn’t, in any tangible way.  The limitations of our earth-life are sometimes painful and perplexing and damaging to us. Life can be messy, illogical, difficult, challenging, scary, depressing, fragile, unpredictable.  The only way we can get through it with joy, is by inviting Jesus to walk the journey with us. God allows evil to touch us but He never leaves us to cope with it on our own.  God’s power is to be found amidst our suffering;  comforting, triumphant and restorative. He has his own purposes, but He always has our spiritual well-being in mind, despite the pain sometimes of our physical, mental and emotional circumstances

May God himself attend us, as we wrestle with the hard questions of life.  Amen

What does the book of Job tell us about God and how he interacts with people?

What does the book of Job tell us about God, people and the creation?

The book of Job is an enigma.  It seems to address the issue of human suffering, and yet there is so much in it which we find hard to understand, not the least of which is God’s final answer to Job about why so much suffering was allowed by Him. He seems to say “I have made all things, and who are you to question what I do”. (Job 38:2-4)

I believe that the book of Job is as much a book of comfort as it is of wisdom, and is, therefore a book which resonates with our emotions.  When awful things happen to us, our emotions are engaged and so the book of Job is able to put our anguish into words, because Job has spoken them long ago;  we can say “yes, that’s how it feels for me too”.  The book of Job has much to tell us about our own human condition, about the nature of God and his response to our frailty.    What can the book of Job tell us….

About God?  We can certainly learn about God’s sovereignty.  God has the power to “place bets” with the devil against Job’s faithfulness and integrity;  he has the power to allow every type of suffering both emotional and physical, in Job’s unblemished life;  he has the power to create life and to destroy life.  In fact, it almost seems like he is simply displaying this power at Job’s expense.

But we can just as surely learn of God’s integrity, His intelligence, His changelessness and his willingness to interact with the human life He has made. The whole story is about God’s willingness to take an interest in our lives.  Even if what happens to Job seems unfair, God is still there at the end, to rebuke the friends and to vindicate as well as rebuke Job.  Would a disinterested Being do this?  God does care what happens to Job, and he doesn’t give up on him even though Job rails at his predicament and questions the purpose of it.  However, in the end, God rebukes Job’s friends because what they have said to Job is wrong.   In this, we see God’s compassion and understanding of Job’s predicament.  He also vindicates Job;  Job has asserted all along that he hasn’t deserved such suffering.  There is no answer to the “why”.  God has the final say, in our lives as well as Job’s.  His methods are better than ours;  his superior knowledge of the past as well as the future, the earthly as well as the heavenly, puts Him in a better position to decide what happens to us.  He made us and his wisdom is above ours.  His right to do what he does, is not to be questioned.

In the poetic sections of the book it seems to Job that God is silent. It seems to Job that while he is undergoing this physical and emotional suffering, God is far away; remote and hidden  – the God who ‘hides his face’ (Job 13:24).  If only there were some point of contact, some common meeting ground, then Job could present his case to God and receive a fair hearing (Job 23:3-7)”.  In the poetic sections, it's Job's faith which is discovered and examined.  Perhaps we should view these sections in the context of the whole book, especially the climactic part when Yahweh speaks.   But it’s such a strange reply.  It’s as though God hasn’t heard all of Job’s anguished arguments. Finally, Job, through this strange communication realizes that he is just a mortal;  a human being whose finite resources and thoughts are completely ineffective for judging the Creator.  Job repents. The book of Job is certainly about human suffering and it's also about divine mystique. It speaks to me about the sometimes puzzling nature of our interaction with God;  of how he seems far away just when we need Him most.  This was Job's experience too and I find that comforting.  And in the end Job came back to trusting God, even though his questions weren't answered the way he wanted.  His trust transcended his circumstances and we can do that too. He trusted a sovereign God with the unanswerable questions and in the process found peace.

About people? 

Their fickleness in the face of our need and suffering.  Rather than offering Job comfort, sympathy, solace or understanding,  they tell him that it must be his sin which has caused all this trouble.  We learn that people can be blind to their own sin, whilst pointing out and judging the sins of others, for if Job, whom the Bible calls “righteous” was punished for  his sin, then why aren’t they similarly punished? . Their logic, as well as their compassion, is flawed.  We learn that, in the face of sorrow and hard times,  people can be insensitive, self-righteous and completely unhelpful. They failed to even acknowledge his pain;  their confident assertions that he only had himself to blame, effectively  invalidated his suffering and he was left stranded and bereft by it. 

 

From Job we can learn much;  goodness, and a desire to live by God’s commands; courage in suffering; integrity in the face of opposition and loss (Chap 27);   acceptance of tragedy, and in the end, God’s involvement in the tragedy. But we also see very clearly, his absolute honestly.  He is bewildered by what has happened, and he tells God this.  He is bowed down;  Chapter 19 makes for chilling reading. He despairs of life and wishes he hadn’t been born (3:1); he has no hope (Chap 7)  and he tells God this too.  We would be wise to do the same when our own life becomes difficult.  Job continues to cling to his ideals.  He also maintains his belief that he has done nothing to deserve such “punishment”(23:11-12).  In his final summary in Chapter 31, he lists all the evil things he could have done but didn’t.   He is honest in this too; he knows who he is and what he has or hasn’t done, as measured against his own set of “life rules”. Amazingly, he still believes God values him.  Thus, he continues to believe in his own self-worth;  his self-worth is built on his honesty as well as his righteousness.  He accepts God’s sovereignty in his life, even after he has lost so much.  Chapter 23: 10-14 resounds with the victory of Job’s belief in this Creator/Father who knows the way he takes.  It’s as though Job knows in his innermost self that all this testing is for a Godly reason and that he will be a stronger soul than he was before (“when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold).

 

The book of Job has much wisdom.  To be able to  accept that bad stuff happens to good people, is wisdom. From the book of Job we learn that life isn’t always fair;  we don’t always get what we deserve either as reward for our righteousness or punishment for our disobedience.

 

About creation?

The language about creation is rich and poetic.  They are strong and beautiful images pointing us to an intelligent, loving and imaginative Creator.  They draw us to this Creation Being.  We are drawn to worship the One who made such beauty.  Consider this: “What holds up the pillars that support the earth?  Who laid the corner-stone of the world?  In the dawn of that day the stars sang together and the heavenly being shouted for joy.” (Job 38:4-7). Perhaps this descriptive language about the Creation has been deliberately used in the book of Job to keep us centred on God’s might and omnipotence because otherwise we might see him as a lesser being, not able to see the big picture or wise enough to know what’s best for us.  A God who created such wonders of nature is surely big enough to hear all we can say to him in anger, frustration, sorrow, anxiety, or doubt.  We can surely trust someone who can build something as amazing as the world and all that’s in it.

I have used some thoughts from a book by :

Anderson, Bernhard W. (1958). The living world of the old testament (4^th Ed.). Essex:  Longman Group UK Limited.

Acts 12:1-11

Acts 12:1-11.  About that time Herod laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church.  He killed James the brother of John with the sword, and when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also.  And when he had seized him,  he put him in prison, delivering him over to four squads  of soldiers to guard him, intending after the Passover to bring him out to the people.  So Peter was kept in prison but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church. 

Now when Herod was about to bring him out, on that very night, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries before the door were guarding the prison.  And behold an angel of the Lord stood next to him, and a light shone in the cell.  He struck Peter on the side and woke him, saying, “Get up quickly.” And the chains fell off his hands…..and he went out and followed the angel.  He did not know that what was being done by the angel was real but thought he was seeing a vision.  When they had passed the first and the second guard, they came to the iron gate leading into the city. It opened for them of its own accord, and they went out and went along one street, and immediately the angel left him. When Peter came to himself he said, “Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting.”

James was killed by Herod and Peter was imprisoned.  Peter was rescued by the angel, but James died.  God allowed the one to be killed but sent help in miraculous ways, for the other to be released.    It is thus in our lives too.  For some, there’s victory, success, triumph.  But others aren’t rescued. There’s not a happy outcome;  the marriage fails, the loved one dies, injustice prevails.  Peter is saved, but James is lost.  Does God favour the one and not the other?  No.  It’s all about what is God’s plan;  what He can see;  what He wants.  He had a good reason  for rescuing Peter;  Peter went on to build His church.  But for James….  the end was also in God’s plan.  It’s just that the outcome and the purpose are hidden from us.  As F B Meyer puts it “eternity will explain the mysteries of time”.  Our course is to keep trusting.  To trust when there is no deliverance and when things don’t go our way, builds faith which accesses the power of heaven;  it builds faith which can break evil strongholds;  it builds faith which can bring all the joy and strength of God to the lives of others. To trust when there is no miracle, is what following Jesus really means.

The other thing I noticed about this passage, was that God waited until the last minute to rescue Peter.  It seems to be how He works, and this is hard to understand.  We wait for rescue, or healing, or help, and it may come at the last minute and we wonder why God waited. Or it may not come at all, at least not in ways we imagined. Meanwhile, the church prayed for Peter’s release. Here is something we can understand.  We can pray.  The verse says they offered “earnest” prayer.  Within that word is a host of meaning.  It bespeaks commitment, honesty, steadfastness and purity.  We should confess our own sins to God, before we can ask and intercede on behalf of someone else.

Then, the angel comes and Peter thinks he’s dreaming.  We know the rest.  He is brought forth to light and freedom.  So, this passage is about miracles and answered prayers and happy endings.  It’s about safe release and restoration to friends and family. There is rejoicing.

But I can’t help but think of James’ mother, keeping  her lonely watch at his tomb.   Not for her the happy ending or the triumph over Herod.  Not for her the jubilant homecoming. She treads  a dark path of sorrow.  

But God is in both circumstances.  He rescues the prisoner, and He also walks the path alongside the stricken mother.  He knows the end from the beginning;  he knows the number of our days and we can trust Him for them.  His plans cannot be thwarted, though hell’s fury threatens.  He who knows all our days and all our plans, keeps them and us by His power