October 11, 2007
Ice Breaker
Because of health issues my sister has just been told she can no longer live alone. She’s out of options, frustrated at the situation and unhappy with me for making decisions on her behalf. Closing her apartment and disposing of items she can no longer keep has been not been an easy task for either of us. Striking me with attitude and tone of voice one too many times I finally said, “None of this is my fault and you can’t blame me for what is happening. If you want to be mad at someone, then get mad at God!” I needed to pass the buck and I thought God could handle it. Besides, I don’t think Shelly has been very communicative with the Lord, maybe getting mad at Him could serve as an ice breaker.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----Good idea. We have a lot over which to get mad at God. From the simplest truth, the truth least given continued attention, the one that is not usually present when mommy takes her newborn into her arms the first time: every last one of us, including that one, is born to die - to the most complex truth: for some, everything they touch turns to gold, while others live in a continuous, impoverished dungeon of anguish and torture, we can turn to God and demand to know why. For He has made the answer available to those who continue to demand with the honesty in heart to expect the truthful answer. For that honesty will turn anger into perseverance.
-----And God stands to reason with us. Yes, He made this world with the foreknowledge that it would turn evil (I Pet 1:20). He knew the beginning as well as the end. He knew the misery between the two. And He knows the misery in detail, in each life, better than each of us know our own miseries. Yet He made us. Yet He allowed this. Why not get mad at Him?
-----The answer you will get from Him if you persist will answer that question as well. For a bandage is not left on a wound for want of the pain it takes to rip it off. The doctor does not set a crocked break for want of the pain of re-breaking the bone. Nor did the battlefield medic allow gang green for want of the grotesqueness of the maggot. Neither will God allow sin to exist in His perfect presence for an eternal span of time for want of the suffering on a temporary Earth. This process we experience and call life is His necessary ripping off the bandage, re-broken bone, or maggoty soar. It will lead to the healing of something far greater than we can imagine, far greater than the sum total of all the world’s suffering, and that much more greater than one individual’s suffering. Even greater than God’s experiencing with His own eyes and His own heart each moment of suffering of every person who ever will live, then each death of each one at the end.
-----My pain today counts, too. It also is a shouting testimony to the angels and all who are humble that what the Lord God is doing with this mess has a great purpose. My pain is an addition to the case made that Satan and the arrogant who choose him must reside away from God in an existence of their own choosing that by the mere nature of what they have chosen will not be pretty. That will not be God’s fault. And although this, today, is God’s fault, it is better termed His credit. For hereafter, those who choose to see and know the truth will live with the Truth forever unbothered. After a couple eternities of that we will know for what the price of pain paid. And we will be thankful that He Who paid our way did so without taking from us our testimony of suffering.
Post a Comment