thanks giving: suffering

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Posted by e. barrett | Posted on 26-11-2008

Category : CS Lewis, God, Jesus, Paul, barbarian, faith, fear, hope

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As I alluded to in the post yesterday, I am thankful for suffering.  I know it sounds strange to say that.  Frankly it seems weird to type it.  But almost everything I treasure has come through suffering, including R3. 

We all want our lives to be easy and convenient.  I think this is especially true in America, where we are used to having everything within minutes, if not seconds.  But no one escapes suffering.  Not even God.  Which leads me to believe that maybe suffering isn’t something to be avoided, it’s something to learn from.

God has a way of taking what the world means for evil and flipping it on it’s head.  In the Chronicles of Narnia, the White Witch thinks she wins by killing Aslan, the Lion.  But she couldn’t be further from the truth.  The suffering, and death of Aslan (a stand in for Jesus) was the exact thing that ends up destroying the evil of the White Witch.  In the book, CS Lewis describes Aslan’s return like this,

“…though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know.  Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of Time.  But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there ad different incantation.  She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.” (Chronicles of Narnia, p.160)

Without suffering the White Witch never would have been defeated.  Without suffering you and I never would have been saved.  Without suffering countless miracles never could have occurred.

Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t look forward to it.  I am not happy about it.  I wouldn’t want to give up a Friday at the movies for malaria.  But I’m learning that sometimes the best teacher is suffering.  And I am willing to do anything that draws me closer to God. 

Because of all of that, I am thankful for suffering

thanks giving: the little things

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Posted by e. barrett | Posted on 25-11-2008

Category : God, faith, fear, hope, miracles

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Looking back at the list of things I am thankful for, I can’t help but notice how many “small things” are on it.  To be honest that surprises me.  Before I sat down, I fully expected my list to have a lot of “big ticket” items.  For instance, my car, my apartment, or even the Steelers. 

But most of what I’m truly thankful for are the so-called “simple pleasures” in my life.  Instead of being excited about the material possessions I have, what matters most to me are the basics – like being able to eat Sour Patch Kids. 

I’m not sure I would have recognized that without this exercise. 

It sounds cliché, but the small things really do matter.  So often we think that in order to be thankful and happy the big things must fall into place.  We tell ourselves, “if we just get this promotion I’ll be happy.”  Or “if only she likes me, then everything would be okay.”  But I’m finding that’s just the opposite.  My life has never been more “up in the air”.  And it’s the little things in my life that keep me excited and motivated. 

Funny how it takes hardship and struggling to realize that…

miracles

Posted by e. barrett | Posted on 05-05-2008

Category : faith, miracles

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When you think about miracles what comes to mind?

Something big?  Something spectacular?  You know, burning bushes, parting seas, a winning season out of the Pittsburgh Pirates?  But miracles aren’t always big.  Sometimes they are small.  Sometimes just being able to get out of bed to go to work is a miracle.

The same thing can be said about how quickly miracles occur.  So often we think that if our prayers aren’t answered immediately, they will never be answered.  But that’s not the case.  As CS Lewis once said, a slow miracle was no less a miracle than a fast one.

Sometimes we complain about a lack of miracles in our lives.  But maybe that’s not the real issue.  Maybe the real issue is that we don’t always recognize the miracles we do experience.

Jesus and the man at the pool

Posted by e. barrett | Posted on 06-03-2008

Category : Jesus, hope, sin

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Jesus once encountered a man who had been an invalid for 38 years.  After listening to the man’s story, he asked an odd question – “Do you want to get well?” (John 5:6)

At first I didn’t really understand this question.  Who wouldn’t want to be healed of their ailments?  Who wouldn’t want to be healthy?  But then it occurred to me, we often define ourselves by our problems and by what we can’t do.  Our troubles become who we are. 

If Jesus came to me and said, “do you want to get well?”  I’d have to be honest and say, “Sometimes I like my sin.  Sometimes it’s fun.”  Part of my identity is still grounded in sin.  And every time I think I get rid of it, I realize just how deep that identity goes. 

Part of me still doesn’t want to be healed.

Are you defined by your sins?  Or do you want to be healed?

what I’m reading: Judges

Posted by e. barrett | Posted on 31-08-2007

Category : God, bible, feeding my brain, miracles

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Sometimes when you think of the Bible you have two different pictures of God.  There’s the hippy, happy-go-lucky God from the New Testament.  And the mean, angry, I’m-going-to-smote-you God from the Old Testament.  At least that’s how I used to picture the Bible before I actually started to read it.

That’s why I really enjoy books from the Old Testament like Judges – it challenges those misperceptions.  There are two themes in Judges that really resonate with me.  The first is that you can be a total screwup and God will still use you.  The second: God has ridiculous patience. 

The book of Judges takes place after Moses (and Joshua), but before David and the Kings.  It’s a time where Israel kept getting “distracted” by the cultures around them and getting into trouble.  The pattern goes like this:

1.  Israel becomes prosperous and begins to worshiping pagan gods
2.  God gets (justifiably) angry and removes his blessing from Israel
3.  Israel is promptly invaded
4.  Israel (eventually) turns back to God and asks forgiveness
5.  God forgives them and sends them a deliverer (a Judge)
6.  The Judge, with God’s help, delivers Israel
7.  Repeat step 1

Usually at Step 7 I want to yell, “Hey Israel!   Haven’t you learned yet?!”  And it’s usually at that point I remember on most days I haven’t learned either…  It makes Israel’s plight very personal.

Books like Judges teach me that God’s blessings do not depend on my perfection.  Samson (the guy with long hair and super strength) had a weakness for women and prostitutes.  Another Judge tried to manipulate God.  Almost all of the judges have some trait we’d consider “bad” in today’s world.  But God still worked miracles through them.

Doesn’t that mean he can do the same through me?  And through you?

God is bigger than me

Posted by e. barrett | Posted on 14-08-2007

Category : God, miracles, trust

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“Now the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest.” (Joshua 3: 15)

It may be obvious that God is bigger than me, but somehow I keep forgetting that fact. Instead, I spend much of my time trying to bring a problem to God that is “manageable.” I’m the Goldie Locks of prayers. I don’t want to give God a problem too big in case he can’t handle it. And I don’t want to give him a problem too small, because I should just suck it up and do that one on my own. Instead, I want a problem that’s just right. Something “do-able” for him, but too hard for me on my own.

Of course that’s not how God works at all

After Moses died Joshua was selected by God to lead the Israelites into the Promised Land. His first act was to take them across the Jordan river. Of course God wasn’t content taking them across the Jordan at any time of the year. Instead he chose to cross the Jordan when it was at it’s most powerful.

God was showing both the Israelites and the Canaanites that what they considered powerful, he did not.  He showed them that what they considered a challenge, he did not. God didn’t want there to be any confusion about who was the one true God. To do this, God was willing to demonstrate his power.

The Canaanites worshiped the god Baal, who had achieved “head god” status precisely because he had beaten the sea-god and could control the water. By crossing the Jordan at the height of its power (and therefore Baal’s power) God was directly challenging that claim to god-hood!

But he was also sending a message to the Israelites. They were shown (once again) just what God could do. They were going to see a major miracle to prove (once again) that God is the God of the amazing, and that nothing was out of his reach.

I can only imagine how I would have responded if I were Joshua.  I would have been right there bargaining with God saying, “isn’t there a better time to do this?  Like, oh, I don’t know…maybe in the middle of a drought?!”  My natural reaction is to find a way to make the problems I face easier for God to solve.  But that’s not how God operates. God is constantly doing what we consider the “impossible.” In fact, you might consider him an expert in the impossible.  He doesn’t want us to be content with just a “normal” crossing, he wants us to know he’s still God when things are at their most difficult!  He wants us to know that our success doesn’t come from ourselves, but from our dependence on him.

God operates in this radical way. He’s not into expectation management.  You’ll never see God under-selling and over-delivering.  God always does the miraculous and amazing.  I hope that some day this lesson will actually stick in my brain, and I won’t try to limit God’s power just because I can’t see how he’s going to solve a problem.  

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