What do a St. Bernard, a flea and Tess of the d’Urbervilles have in common?

Just because I cannot understand the reason for suffering doesn’t mean there is none?
The illustration goes that if you look into a two-man tent and you cannot see a St. Bernard justifies that there is no St. Bernard in the tent. But, if you look into the two-man tent and you do not see a flea does not mean that there is no flea there (Based on an illustration of Alvin Plantinga). To say that God is not good enough or powerful enough to deal with suffering and make the conclusion that there is no God because of it, is a subjective deduction. To make claims that there is no God or there is no meaning in the suffering of the world rest entirely on our cognitive skills and who can ever claim to know the wonders and horrors of the universe. (Thoughts inspired by Timothy Keller’s book – The Reason for God).

There is suffering that leaves us wondering whether there is any meaning in it but if we examine our lives we will find that the suffering we have experienced has shaped us some way or another. I watched a BBC production of Tess of the d’Urbervilles by
Thomas Hardy recently. I could see no redemption of the suffering she encountered, she even called her dead child “Sorrow”. But, who am I to say what suffering did for her as a person. Who is to say that she would not have had more meaning in life than one who grew up eating cakes and sweet tea? It does leave one with the awkward question, especially the counselor of how we help or redeem people from their suffering?

Why no young people at Holy Week services?

Not sure whether it is my imagination but in conversation with younger folk in the church there is an aversion in attending the services of Holy Week. One person was quite frank about the Good Friday service when he noticed we were using “Listening at Golgotha” by Peter Storey as the theme. He said: “Is that one of those heavy services again. I cannot attend those, they are too much for me.” There seems to be a trend in contemporary worship that denies grief, sorrow and mourning an expression in the liturgy of our worship. The Holy Week services intentionally examine the cost of unconditional love and the price of living in God’s will. It reminds us of God’s embrace of our common human suffering. It is invaluable that at times we examine the depths of our faith and what it really means to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. It is not a shining set of drums and how high we can raise our voices but how we intentionally wrestle through our Gethsemane and fulfill the love sacrifice despite of the loss incurred.

What do Christianity and a mother in labour have in common?

“… unless we suffer like a woman in travail, we shall not succeed in bringing to birth the spirit of salvation in the ground of our heart.” Theophan the Recluse

We sat, six of us men in meeting last evening. We were missing our fellow leader of the fairer sex who might have given us new light on the subject of Christian suffering. The question before us was: “Does God call us to suffering in our ministry?” The answer was – no, not for suffering sake but in order to fulfill the will of God in Christ we will come to suffering somewhere, somehow. On reflection this morning I am wondering if God has not called us to suffering and we ought not skirt the issue. Theophan the Recluse (A bishop in the Russian orthodox church in the 19th Cent.) makes his point that there is no spiritual salvation without suffering akin to a woman giving birth. The longer I am a Christian the more I realize the importance to be transformed into the likeness of Christ. This will often cost me dearly in my pride, my pocket, my reputation, my time, my patience, my breaking point, and my all. This is no doubt what Jesus meant when he said: “You must be born again.”

Here's to a cup worth drinking

What can one add to the words and spiritual thoughts of Henri Nouwen?
I re-read his book “Can you drink the cup?” yesterday and I was moved deeply by his spiritual perception and knowledge of he human soul. What I appreciated most was the call to drink our life’s sorrows and joys to the bottom of the cup. Through inner reflection to decipher our identity, through fellowship with those we trust with our deepest life issues and the ability to act out our call and nothing else we drink life to the full. This book will make an excellent Lent series for congregations based around the question Jesus asked – “Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?” Matt 20:20-23.

Gone soft or what?

Again I am confronted with the thought that all that happens is the will of God. I realize that much of the pain that does happen is a learning curve for the Christian. However, I cannot imagine a God allowing certain atrocities to happen. God may not want it to happen, but allows it. No loving being who has the power to do something for his child would sit and watch that child burn to death, be raped by another, be tortured for a truth, or become senile. But, have we become soft? Have we got it into our minds that our lives should be easy and without conflict? Maybe that is what happens once the Christian achieves what they strive for in God. A community that is loving, caring, patient, kind, could become oblivious to the realities of life outside this domain. It settles into the dream forgetting the pains it took to achieve it. Liberty has been fought for not only by careful prayer and well considered word, but it has come by the sword. The dark forces of society have been resisted with armies and in battle fields to defend what it calls civilization, for some Christendom. But, again have we become soft? Jesus was not warrior of gun metal nor shell. Jesus took on the act of being betrayed to highlight the higher ideal, the greater reward that seeks no pleasures in this life but a hope that is beyond. Breaking the pattern of sword against sword he died to build a Kingdom not won by barbed wire or mortar but won by the few who hold the hope of a world just beyond.

Doors of intimacy

There is no way out, it is the way in. The way into the growth you desire. Grief and the emotions of sadness are not headaches to be exorcised with an aspirin. They are doorways of your cathedral, high arching, broad sided, thick wooded and with them on your shoulder you walk the path less traveled. Up and along the traitors hardened path between aisles towards the hill where black crows fly. The pain you feel splinters deep but when you reach the alter and collapse prostrate with grief's too heavy from doors so damn difficult. The cry of reason will echo in hallowed halls, repeating themselves from statues, martyrs, crosses and hard scrubbed floors. “I feel you, I cry with you, I am with you.”