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.

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.

God in dark valleys

All of us have times in our lives when we pass through a very dark valley.  Some of us walk them over and over;  some of us have enduring sorrows or illness which impact us every day. We cope in different ways.  In all our dark days, God wants to be there to walk through the valley with us. 

For some, this presence is very real, in the person and spirit of Jesus;  for others whose experience of God has perhaps been overlaid with some kind of alienating experience (often from the organised church or some prattling Christian who offers trite advice and bible verses, without any empathy with suffering);  for these, the presence of God is not so clear.  But God is still there.  It might be in the kind word of a nurse who listens as we endure a long night of pain or bewilderment;  it might be an act of kindness from a stranger;  it might even be through some worldly advice.  I heard recently of a person who was at the end of his own resources being told, “tie a knot in the rope, and hang on”.  God is there in all that, and more.  Lord of compassion, give us obedience today, to deny our own egos and let your love and care, pass to those we meet today. Give us humility, so we can see you in the faces of those who suffer.