Success

Some food for thought for the season of Lent:

"Any church or any preacher who keeps preaching the cross is not going to grow. The preacher will not be a success and the church will not grow, because in our culture what we are interested in is success, not sacrifice."
Phillip Rieff

Hmmmmm.

I'm not an ER fan (I think I've only seen one episode). Should I be?
Discuss.

Lament

We're talking about--and practicing--the biblical art of lament on Sunday morning. For some wonderful thoughts on why this may be an important part of our Christian lives, check out this entry in Jim Schaap's blog. Good stuff.

Growing into Providence

"I cannot fit it all [tragedy] together by saying, 'God did it.' But neither can do so by saying, 'There was nothing he could do about it.' I can only, with Job, endure.”

Nicholas Wolterstorff in Lament for a Son

An elderly gentleman told me a story today. It must've happened more than eighty-five years ago, when he was a little boy. He didn't elaborate on the details, though it was clearly etched in his mind.

It seems that a a group of children from the neighborhood went swimming at a local pond one day. One of them didn't come home.

At the funeral, the preacher said: "This was not an accident. This was a part of God's plan. This was God's will."

My old friend has never forgotten it.

I'm not sure if he believed his preacher or not. But it seems that he did. It seems that he found the words to be full of hope, full of comfort.

I'm not sure that I do.

I worry that--with all our Calvinistic talk about Divine Providence and Sovereignty and Control--we run the risk of making God the author of evil. For if God pulls the puppet strings that pull a young boy under water, what can you call it but evil? I wonder, wouldn't we be better off if we gave the credit for these things to somebody/something else?

On the other hand--I understand the comfort in knowing/believing that things don't simply happen at random; that there is a higher purpose; that the Good God is in control and that tragedy strikes because he has some hidden good in mind that we cannot understand.

I suspect that there is some messy middle ground between these two positions (micromanaging of the universe on the one hand and liaise faire style of governance on the other) where the truth about God's role in all this lies. There must be some way to nuance our theological language that respects both the power of our good God as well as the reality and power of evil.

I'll let you know when I find it.

In the meantime, I find that when trying to make sense of God's role in the brokenness of this world and in our lives, most folks toss nuance out the window and pick one side or the other. As for me--the longer I'm in ministry, the more I'm learning to respect the folks who put their faith in a God who is in complete control. It takes a lot of faith (and chutzpa) to sit by the hospital bed of a loved one, to stand over the casket of a friend, to take a pink slip from a boss, to watch the evening news and to still say: It was God's will. I do not understand it all. But I know God is good. God is in control. And that is enough for me.

But like I said, I'm not quite there yet. It seems to me that in so many matters of faith, I'm like a child playing dress up--I've got Dad's suit, tie, and shoes on, but they're all too big. I've got some growing to do before I can fit into them quite right. And while I'd like to think that I've grown up a bit in the past few years--while the "pants of providence" don't pool around my ankles quite like they used to--I've still got some growing to do before I say with the the same simple conviction of that Dominie of years gone by: "This was not an accident. This was a part of God's plan. This was God's will."

Deep Sea Divers

I've been re-reading portions of Philip Yancey's book on prayer this week as I prepare for a (unexpected) sermon on Psalm 13. Yancey has a gift for listening to the wisdom and insights of other people. Two of those insights he includes in his book include similiar metaphors--and they seem fitting for this week.

On grief: "Evengelicals tend to want to get to the happy ending. Sometimes, there is no happy ending, and we're simply suspended in grief. When I'm with suffering people, I feel like a deep-sea diver accompnaying them into the depths. Come up too fast, and you'll dangerously decompress. We need to stay with the grief for a while, feel it, let it out. maybe we can see things through tears that we can't see dry-eyed." (269).

On prayer: "...God has equipped us to go deep-sea diving and instead we wade in bathtubs. What makes the difference...is how seriously we take prayer. I see prayer as the process of becoming available for what God wants to do on earth through us." (276)