Three, no four, emotive experiences linger into the quiet of this Sunday’s eve, 09-19-21.
The first was a conversation by phone as grief pouring out in minutes of sobbing over loss, filled the silence between two, each of whom shared the pain; for one, it was like a knife cutting deeply into her soul and the other the silent moans of knowing no words could comfort, only the honor of acceptance could hope to embrace.
Why? Why? ..we both wondered. God could have spared the life consumed by pandemic power. Why not this mother? Why, others?
It is simply too easy a solution offered by many thoroughly Godly academics to address this crises in faith by placing God within the universe, evolving around and through a billion bio-chemical, quantum choices informed, pursuaded, nurtured along by human and Divine choices of love. God, cannot create out of nothing for there is, nor ever has been—in this paradigm—a time when “nothing” existed.
I turn away from such reasoning because it seems a de-humanizing response to tragic human suffering to suggest that God does not intervene because God cannot. In such a worldview love is simply an option among many, a personal and cosmic response of a Presence powerful, but bound within the multiple and deeply personal options that is the universe. There is no All-powerful Love behind and underneath tragic events to which even the chaos of the cosmos must answer. Power, as an albeit complex and necessarily difficult choice is removed because God and the eternal universe is inextricably bound, each to the other.
I remember well my father’s own healing from lymphosarcoma, having been given less than 60 days of life. I was at a Sunday table in the modest, even poor home of our parishoner, a logger by trade, who having fasted for three days asked to pray for my dads healing. The next morning my father indicated he could not feel his latest lump. Scheduled that week to begin cobalt treatments my dad was taken through a series of tests only to hear his primary cancer physician tell him that not only was his lump gone but there was no sign of a cancerous cell in his body. Even so, two decades later he was diagnosed with colon cancer.
There is within the human spirit a deeply felt need for Shalom, a place of well-being, of peace—toward which a chaotic universe must move. God is One, three unique Persons in Communal Union, committed to a sovereignty of love; costly to the Trinity of God and to all humanity and the universe. God acts and mostly listens in a cruciform patience removing and re-shaping chaos into the likeness of peace. It is painfully slow and most of the time feels as though it will never be.
As I wept inwardly with my friend yesterday I could not, nor would I try, to suggest her loss was God’s will. It clearly is not. I could only acknowledge her pain and my own, her questions and my own. And all that within a very real hope that one day, “All will be well.
All manner of things things shall be made well, both great and small.”1
It strikes me that this is the heart and soul of our human journey in and toward Shalom. Wether by irrational faith that attempts to pro-claim purposeful, conscious Godly choice inside every tragedy or by an appeal to God’s powerlessness, we remove the one thing that makes us uniquely human—hope in the goodness of God in the very face of what makes belief in justice or love seem impossible—yet we do.
Our call is to hold onto a patient optimism that is centered in the crucifixion and resurrection possibilities.
Blessings! Terry :)
See snippets from our pastors sermon, September 19, 2021 rooted in Hebrews 10: 19-24 on this theme of Patient Hope: https://youtu.be/oE_TR3jOj_Q
1 Quote taken from memory by: Ann Jillian of Norvitch, a 13 century Anchoress of the Church; as one devoted to the church and local community in prayer and offering spiritual, psychological comfort. To read more on such a mission go to my book “50 Days of Promise”
note: This blog is inspired and real reading from: https://www.amazon.com/Patient-Ferment-Early-Church-Christianity/dp/0801048494?asin=0801048494&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1
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