We ask why a lot Part 2!

Last week a wife and mother awoke to find her husband unresponsive on the couch. They called 911 and began CPR but he died. He had not been sick etc. Death is always unexpected but this had no precursor or hint of illness. The question of why and the quick search for a health issue or any other event or cause turned up nothing. That event changed everything.

The question of why around death is indeed a tough one except if we are born we will die. Death and taxes are certain things in this world we live in. The exception is the return of Jesus and all bets are off then. Everything that we thought we knew will be changed in the twinkling of an eye. Jesus does that. I think he alone delights in that. Just ask one who is basking in grace for the first time. They will say everything has changed.

The question of why grows deeper when we consider who has been left in a death. In the above situation a wife is now a widow and two sons are now without an earthly father. What has perplexed me in my why is their ages 12 and 20. In most everything our concern is about us. We and I are just like that. How does this affect me? Why is this happening to me? You know the drill. I was asking in my self-absorbed, twisted way why a 12 year old is without a father when I know a 52 year old (me) who still has my 90 year old dad? We only ask those questions when we have been directly touched by such an event. Truth is people die every day. Children are left fatherless, wives without husbands, fathers without sons and mothers without daughters multiple times every single day. That is the way life is an IF THEN statement. If you are born then you will die. We are always so startled when it happens.

Why are we startled? Startled by those left and the situations, startled by the very occurrence of a death and startled by the realization that our life will end too. That is probably the thing there. The slap-in-your-face realization that death which we try so hard to avoid, death that we have spent so much time and money trying to delay is coming and we can’t stop it. Nope, I can’t stop it.

If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. Romans 14:8 HCSB.

The key here is not living or dying but the LORD. Either way one who is committed to Jesus as Christ “belongs to the Lord.” My question of why can only be answered in full by the Lord. Anyone else is speculating as to the reason and purpose. So, what to do in the until then?

LIVE, Really LIVE!

⁸ And God is able to make every grace overflow to you, so that in every way, always having everything you need, you may excel in every good work. 2 Corinthians 9:8 HCSB

In HIS Service and Yours,

George

We ask why a lot!

If you have lived with a three year old you know what it is to be asked “how come?” or “Why” every moment of the day. It’s cute the first hundred times but not so much after that. Yet, why is how we learn. It is the process of understanding that which is not for us. It good to be inquisitive. It also assume we think we can understand the answer.

My mother took a fall this week bruising her chest. She suffered no broken bones but is very sore. She will send a lot of time trying to answer why such an event happened. At first it is good but then it becomes taxing. That quest for understanding events in our lives is often unsatisfying because sometimes there is no answer that leads to our understanding. This is brought to the surface when the answer to why is one that we don’t like and therefore do our best to not accept. There are accidents with no easy direct cause and for some that is very difficult to understand.

Sometimes our search for understanding leads us to jump to easy and quick conclusions that in honesty may be true but also may not be true. In tragedy some of our most callused remarks are intended to bring understanding and therefore comfort. However, they don’t because they simple are not true. Our search for easy understandable answers can lead us to speak heartache into lives that are already hurting. We have become so egotistical that we assume we can understand everything and in that understanding prove we really know very little. It’s sad.

Jesus said “Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are blessed, for they will be filled. Matthew 5:6 HCSB

How will that happen when our question cannot be answered? God spoke to Jeremiah these words.

² “The Lord who made the earth,^[a] the Lord who forms it to establish it, Yahweh is His name, says this: ³ Call to Me and I will answer you and tell you great and incomprehensible things you do not know. Jeremiah 33:2-3 HCSB

Is that not like God to say call to me, I am the God who made you and everything around you, I know this, call to me and I will tell you what you do not know. Now hear this there is no promise to answer you specific question but to answer what you do not know. Maybe an even greater question than the one you are asking.

How about That?

Why would God do that?

Because he loves us so!

In HIS Service and Yours,

 

Bro George

The moon was just a sliver through the trees!

As I stepped out of the door to walk the dog, through the trees I could see the last glow of the reflection of the sun on the surface of the moon. It was not bright and full of fire but more of a warming afterglow following a night of almost full brightness. Even then it still provided light to the yard in between the long steel blue shadows of the pines. The dog and I stepped into the morning and we walked around the back of the house turning slowly towards the front when I looked up and it was gone. No light, no afterglow, no reflection of the sun just the dark in coldest, stillest part of the night before the sun rises to begin a new day.

I was startled. I don’t know why it happens every night like that and most times I don’t take any notice of the cycle but today I did. I saw it happen. It seemed so much darker than before. I seemed so much more alone in among the trees with no extra light now. It was like the when life has taken a dark turn and you are in between the bad and the good, the night and the day maybe like Saturday after the crucifixion on Friday and before the resurrection of Jesus on Sunday. That in between spot where nothingness seems to rule. It leaves you wondering if it rules?

Nothingness does NOT rule! Although we no longer see the reflection of the light, the light is NOT extinguished.

^26-28 Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans...That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good. Romans 8:26-28 The Message

Those times in our lives when we can no longer see the light that illuminated our souls nor the reflection of that light in others, those times leave is feeling alone and in between but the Holy Spirit has been and is there uttering our prayers that we cannot even make. We have not only the Holy Spirit speaking on our behalf but also the Son of the Living God.

The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Romans 8:32 The Message

Can you believe it? Jesus is sticking up for you and me even in the nothingness of our lives when it seems all of the light has been extinguished. There is still the Light of the World speaking for us, instead of us to the Creator Yahweh. Amen

⁵ The carnal attitude sees no further than natural things. Romans 8:5 J.B. Phillips

That was me in the trees when I could no longer see the light reflecting off the surface of the moon!

But the spiritual attitude reaches out after the things of the spirit. Romans 8:5 J.B. Phillips

This was me when I went inside and opened the Word of God. It was still dark outside and the coldest of the night but I was warm and in the light and not alone.

So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? Romans 8:31 The Message

In HIS Service and Yours

Bro G

By 5:40am I had yelled at the dog and fussed at Carolyn!

I had only been up 10 minutes. That is a great way to start the day. By 9am I had run into two others (no one was physically or emotionally injured I think) who had started the day in a similar fashion. That sounds like trouble. Oh yes, I could list all of my reasons. That usually does little to no good. All it does is make me feel justified in my misery for a moment. Sometimes it helps us to place blame on others as a way of deflection for our own responsibility.

I am reading the Psalms right now. I was trying to read 5 psalms a day but not so much anymore. Once you get to Psalm 100. They get longer and longer so 5 a day is not as easy. I read through Psalm 109. It startled me. However, this seems fitting for today and how I feel about today.  I have selected a few verses Ps. 109 6-10 The Message. You WILL get the picture.  

• When he’s judged, let the verdict be “Guilty,” and when he prays, let his prayer turn to sin.
• Give him a short life, and give his job to somebody else.
• Make orphans of his children, dress his wife in widow’s weeds; Turn his children into begging street urchins, evicted from their homes—homeless.
• May the bank foreclose and wipe him out, and strangers, like vultures, pick him clean.
• Chop down his family tree so that nobody even remembers his name.
• But erect a memorial to the sin of his father, and make sure his mother’s name is there, too—
  Their sins recorded forever before God, but they themselves sunk in oblivion.
• Since he loved cursing so much, let curses rain down;
  Since he had no taste for blessing, let blessings flee far from him.
• That’s what they’ll get, those out to get me—an avalanche of just deserts from God.

Well that is clear, the writer does not like the guy at all.
But there is another side…there always is. Notice what has happened to the writer in all of his anger.

Oh, God, my Lord, step in; work a miracle for me—you can do it!
Get me out of here—your love is so great!— I’m at the end of my rope, my life in ruins.
I’m fading away to nothing, passing away, my youth gone, old before my time.
I’m weak from hunger and can hardly stand up, my body a rack of skin and bones.
I’m a joke in poor taste to those who see me; they take one look and shake their heads. Psalm 109:21-25 The Message

That which he wished on his enemy has happened to him. The rest of the psalm is the answer to my attitude for today and yours for the next difficult time. It is to focus on God, cry out for his protection and rescue and rejoice in your salvation at the hand of God.

My mouth’s full of great praise for God, I’m singing his hallelujahs surrounded by crowds,
For he’s always at hand to take the side of the needy, to rescue a life from the unjust judge. Psalm 109:30-31 The Message

Just when I thought the Bible would justify my bad attitude there I am laid waste. So, my prayer was/is God please protect your light from my attitude of toad and would you change my attitude so that your Light Jesus can be seen.

The day is looking up. Dad is so good like that.  

In HIS Service and Yours

BroG