Evil

In my devotions, this caught my eye. Frederick Buechner writes,

"God is all- powerful.
God is all-good.
Terrible things happen.
Yuo can reconcile any two of these prepositions with each other, but you can't reconcile all three. The promble of evil is perhaps the greatest single problem for religious faith." He goes on to describe how various religions attempt to resolve it; by denying the actual reality of evil as an illusion of the mind, or by creating a system of cyclical cause and effect perpetrated through 'reincarnation'.
He continues, "Christianity, on the other hand, ultimately offers no theoretical solution at all. It merely points to the cross and says that, practically speaking, there is no evil so dark and so obscene---not even this---but that God can turn it to good."

Is that not the gift of Christianity? To walk with the suffering, indeed to suffer with the world, in order that the world might know the deeper truth---that suffering is not the last word, but is the penultimate word to God's ultimate Word, which is always and forever LIFE. Should we not affect an end to suffering? By all means. But we also should realize that God himself is deeply intimate with suffering. he knows and feels it, as if it has become part of created reality for some holy purpose. At least, from this side of the cross we can make divine meaning from suffering that points to God's love and life. So when you watch the news and you see innocents suffering today, declare the truth of what you see or who you see. (with the eyes of faith) You see Christ and so you see hope.

In my devotions for today, Marva Dawn asks questions related to the ways in which we try to substitute God for worldly possessions. She writes, "Sometimes we think we can't get along without a certain possession or a certain person or a certain kind of comfort. To insist on these is to make idols out of whatever we desire...
What ambitions become gods for us and distort our visions?...What do we substitute for total dependence on God? What keeps us from trusting God---our need for love, our insecurities, our fears or sufferings or sorrows or doubts about God's character? What prevents us from following Jesus, from relinquishing our control to the Holy Spirit, from relying on the Father? Do we know who we are primarily because we are the beloved of God?"

Good questions. Ponder these--or any one of them, for that matter-- today. And then make a prayerful commitment to receive the Holy Spirit anew.

World Vision

I believe that Christians are called to stand with the least. In so doing we are serving Christ himself (Matthew 25). Often the least are the most beautiful children who are born into the slavery of poverty. Millions of children will not live past the age of five because of preventable illness. We can and should do something about it. You will find the World Vision button under my links column to the right. This link will take you directly to World Vision's Child Sponsorship page. For $30.00 a month you can raise the quality of life for a child in a developing country. Help make poverty history and sponsor a child. World Vision is the organization that sponsors "the 30 hour famine", an event we take part in every March to raise money and awareness in th fight to end hunger.

A Word for Today

"Raising genuinely Christian children in a culture tht chooses many idolatries to try to assuage or repress its restless hunger is NOT a lost cause IF the church stands as an alternative community, incarnating-though imperfectly now-the kingdom of God for which everyone most deeply yearns. We must help our children to understand that the materialistic consumerism, desire for ease, craving for entertainment, passivity, violence, and sexual immorality of the society around us all arise out of vain attempts to quench life's deepest thirst. We must equip them with skills to resist the deceptions, to rememebr the truth that God alone will satisfy their deepest longings, and to reach out with love to neighbors searching for the living water of eternal life." --Marva Dawn, "Morning by Morning", p.236.

God's Word in Worship

August 27, 2006
12th Sunday after Pentecost

Joshua 24:1-2a,14-18
Psalm 34:15-22
Ephesians 6:10-20
Gospel: John 6:56-69