paravanes:meditations

It can be difficult to relate to the idea of God experiencing or feeling pain, but the Bible is full of references to the longings, regrets, and pain of God in seeking relationship with us, his creatures. A God who longs for us? Read Matthew 23:37, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing." A God who regrets our shortcomings and feels pain for our insistence on running away on our own paths of frustration and failure? Read Genesis 6:5, 6: "The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth and his heart was filled with pain ." So, on God's Friday (Good Friday), God acknowledged we were (and still are) in spiritual bankrupt

At left: Ancient Moabite inscription, The Stela of Mesha I just finished re-reading the Old Testament book of Ruth as I make my way through that portion of Scripture. Teachers and commentators have described the book as a human love story, a picture of God's love for Israel, and a picture of Christ's love for the Church. For me, the story of Naomi and Ruth is also a story about making peace with loss, expressing fear (fear= f ace e verything a nd r ecover), finding a new way to live, and losing attachments to old dreams. It's a story about starting over. The four short chapters of this book (it's a quick read--click on this post's title) tell about two women who experienced the deaths of their husbands (and, in that day, their economic support and security), temporary homelessness, living on charity, and living as foreigners in a strange land. In spite of all of this, when these women turned to God, God granted them joy, security, family, love, and a future. What m