paravanes:meditations

Another author takes a stab at the age old question of why a loving, all-powerful God would allow so much suffering. No cutesy answers here, just a real dialogue with a Creator who "looks" and sounds like someone "in the world, but not of it". Young's book doesn't cheat and he leaves you with no easy answers. Instead, he challenges you to consider God has a timetable different from our own. Listen to a booktalk on William P. Young's The Shack here .

Job loss. Divorce. Death of a parent, sibling, or child. Bankruptcy. Foreclosure. Serious illness. Tragic accident. Betrayal by a trusted friend. Business failure. Fire or flood. Each of these are "before and after" events. These events force us to evolve into a different person. These events strip a sense of safety and security away from us. These events are painful, gut-wrenching, and they re-order our world. I call them LAEs (life altering events) because no matter how we choose to respond, we are permanently changed by these events. Regardless of who is responsible, we are forced into a new space by these events. Jerry White's I Will Not Be Broken is an easy to read, insightful guidebook for finding the way to wholeness after a tragic loss. In my own experience, the biggest challenge after experiencing a loss is making the firm decision to grow out of the loss and not to sink underneath the weight of it. One of White's guidelines for growing out of a loss is reac...

Over this past weekend, I followed and participated in an incredible discussion on another blog . I held a rather unpopular position during the discussion--which is OK--but the tone of the discussion was rather striking to me because as I embraced Christianity, I have understood this decision to mean that I can't do whatever I want and that my personal preferences would be subject to the guidelines of my beliefs. How silly of me to think everyone viewed it that way . I'm increasingly concerned about how credible Christianity will appear to those outside of "the fold." We are under a real challenge to hold ourselves obedient to our own faith. Everyone I know agrees loving your neighbor and forgiving people are good ideas. Who would object to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you"? Then we get to more unpopular pronouncements from "The Founder": 34"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring ...

How many times has this happened? I set a well-reasoned, thoughtfully considered goal. I ask God to guide me to the correct outcome (the one I have in mind, of course). I ask a trusted friend for help or rely upon a stable resource for support. What emerges is the opposite of what I'd hoped for, or something worse. Emotionally, this feels like rejection. I suppose it is. I am slowly learning to understand what looks like rejection, tastes like rejection, and sounds like rejection is often divine direction masquerading in an ugly outfit. So much of pop psychology and self-help theology (can there be such a thing?) condition us to believe we should have what we have thoughtfully and prayerfully requested. Besides, aren't there Bible verses to support this outlook? Matthew 7:7-11 says: 7"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will b...

I met spoken word artist Cherrie Amour a few weeks ago and she was kind enough to give me a copy of her CD, Love's Journey: Spoken Songs . The third piece on the recording, "Six Figures", made me think and re-think about how we choose someone to love. Growing up in a conservative church, I recall no lessons in Sunday School or Vacation Bible School about how to choose someone to love. Perhaps the implication of this was that the girls could not afford to be choosy and would accept the earliest or best offer (of marriage, that is) that came along. As it turned out, many of us decided to be choosy. Some of us were right-choosy and some of us were wrong-choosy. Some of us were in-the-middle choosy. As someone said to me recently, it is unclear how effective our choosiness was in helping us find happiness. But we found what we found. Considering that marriages in the Biblical era were prearranged by family elders, the holy book is nearly silent on the self-selection dating a...

I have, on the wall space over my desk, a National Geographic map of the world. It's a physical map, displaying Earth's geology and geography without regard for political boundaries. I take a slow look at this map whenever I need to put myself, my problems, or my concerns in perspective. I am occupying a little bit of time in a little bit of space. If I really need to put things in perspective, I find photos of deep space. Looking at those images never fails to refocus my understanding of who is running the cosmos, including the little bit of space I am currently occupying. I was saddened and truly sorrowful when I learned of Tim Russert's passing. I was a huge fan of his program, Meet the Press . In the days before the show offered a netcast, I was late for church a few Sundays when I couldn't tear myself away from the program. Tim Russert and Meet the Press were two of my last remaining reasons to watch network television. I admire excellence. Although Meet the Pres...

Father's Day has been a special day for me for as long as I can remember. My father passed on (or up, over, etc.) six years ago. In one of my journals, I've kept (and often referred to) one of his sermon outlines from 1990. The topic of the sermon is decision making. Although my father taught me a well-known and time-tried method of decision making --draw a line down the middle of a sheet of paper and list all of the pros and cons--I realize true and honest decision making involves intangibles that cannot always be reduced to words in columns on paper. There is an intuitive, spiritual dimension to the choices we make and the consequences that follow. I know for sure I don't dare make a major decision without prayer and waiting and listening. It is possible to be certain of God's leading if we ask, wait, and listen. The asking is easy, the waiting is hard, the listening is transformative. Here's the sermon from 1990: “Decisions Determine Destinies” Rev. T...