Kansas City Tax Day Tea Party
I will post more on this later, but here are my favorite pictures of the day. The entire set is on Flickr is you’re really feeling frisky.
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Good Friday?
There are two major events happening today: a mass funeral near L’Aquila, Italy for the victims of the massive earthquake that hit the Abruzzo region on Monday and while there are Good Friday events going on around the world today, the one I’m thinking about specifically is the one in Jerusalem where people have gathered to re-re-walk the final steps of Jesus as he went up to Golgotha, which is generally believed to be the site on which the Church of the Holy Sepulcher now sits.
I’ve had both on my mind today, but I had a brief, chance conversation today that seemed to tie the two together pretty well and out them in a larger context.
I listened to most of this morning’s update about the earthquake on my way to the community center to work out and had my two young kids in the car with me and as you can imagine, didn’t catch the whole story. The only two details I got were 289 people now confirmed dead and a little over 200 of them were receiving a mass state funeral today.
Can you imagine seeing that? Two hundred caskets all lined out in front of you? And the 16 or so children that died were placed in little white caskets that were laid on the casket of their parents.
Just thinking about a tragedy of that scale makes me stop and re-evaluate what’s really important to me and I wasn’t even there. How much more so for the people who were or know someone who was? It’s sad. Really, really sad. Especially for those without real hope. But we’ll come back to that.
Around the world today, millions of people celebrated Good Friday which commemorates the day that Jesus fulfilled his role as the Christ and was crucified. It’s a profoundly somber time for a lot of folks, others attended services out of tradition, some out of guilt and some not at all while still others didn’t know that today had any special designation other than TGIF. I didn’t attend any service today so I’m not throwing stones, just making an observation. But I have been thinking about it a lot. More so than any other year previous. That’s not a surprise really as I have also spent the last year and a half reading my Bible more than any other time in my life both academically and personally so it’s an easy connection.
So I come to the age-old question of why Jesus had to die. I mean, we all die physically, but what was so remarkable about this one dude’s death? Even in this event of laying down his life for us, I think about how even in this act, it’s not so much what Jesus did that was paramountly important. It’s who he was that made this particular scenario different.
Theologian John Piper made an interesting comment in his book “Brothers We Are Not Professionals”. He said “God loves His glory more than He loves us, and this is the foundation of His love for us.” Now just think about that for a second. God loves his glory more than us? As Piper later points out, that does make God sound a bit on the self-centered ego-maniacal side which is not the God that I know. But if you add in the rest of the quote about that glory-loving love (which I don’t think we can even begin to really understand) being the foundation of the love that he has towards us, then it stats to make sense if you chew on it a bit. It also gives some interesting perspective possibilities to why things happen the way that they can or do.
Isaiah 55:8For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. 9For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Again, we’ll come back to that.
So as I was working out, I ran into the US Recruiting Director for Avant Ministries who I had previously met at a missions workshop a little over a month ago. I knew that Avant happened to have a team in Italy and I inquired about them to see if they had been affected at all. He had been on the road and had only headlines for details on the earthquake as I did but through the course of the conversation about the deaths and the destruction. We also discussed how after a tragedy of that proportion, people tend to look to God and really re-evaluate things in their lives in terms of lasting importance. I remember back on September 11th, 2001 when our Congress came together on the steps of the Capitol and after some brief speeches expressing outrage and making promises, a spontaneous round of “God Bless America”. Our national anthem is “The Star-Spangled Banner”, why not that song?
Like we had conversed about, tragedy has a way of making people turn to God, if even only for a moment in time.
Then, he said something that really caught me off guard. It was deep, profound and yet, amazingly simple. I’ll have to paraphrase here, but he asked something to the effect of “It makes you wonder why there are earthquakes at all.” I wasn’t tracking with him right at first. “Well, if everything in creation exists only to bring glory to God, earthquakes would be included”.
Wow.
It completely shut me down. I mean like, suddenly staring a new hole in the floor with my mouth half open kind of shut down. I had never thought of a natural disaster in that way. Why do earthquakes exist at all? God, when he was creating the world, could very well have made up the place without them, and yet, they are here. We routinely write them off as naturally recurring phenomena that usually results in destruction on some level, particularly when they occur within in more densely populated areas, we tend to measure the destruction as being greater.
This is not to suggest that God vengefully inflicts pain and suffering just for cosmic kicks and grins, although in terms of His sovereignty, it would be well within his right to do so, but that’s a whole other topic for another time. But that’s messed up! Why would this supposedly loving, all-powerful God allow such things to happen? Let me ask you this, do you think that there are people in the mountains of Eastern Italy crying out to God for comfort tonight? Crying out for an internal healing of their heart because of the loss of a loved one? What about the estimated 30,000 people that are now displaced and were effectively rendered homeless? Are there not some who are turning to Jehovah-jireh (The Lord will provide) because they have absolutely nowhere else to turn? Are these hypothetical (but very probable) examples all not differing forms of what can be considered glory? Turning to the one who can control it all, acknowledging your own insufficiencies and his ultimate abilities?
But…but… What was all that bit about he loves us then? What was all that supposed to be about? So he can just kill us off at will and it’s all okay because he’s bigger? Well, if you’re asking that or something similar, then I will assume that you’re also jumping to the conclusion that we have somehow done something worthy of being loved but there’s this little thing called sin that separates us from directly receiving that love.
And that’s the kicker of the whole thing. The Lord will either provide or he won’t, and in this case, he absolutely did. We won’t understand the full implication of what Jesus did for us on what we call Good Friday (or more importantly, his resurrection on Easter) this side of heaven but God did in fact make a way through his love of his own glory that we could come and hang out with him long after the any residual earthquake aftershocks have died down.
The entirety of Romans chapter 8 is appropriate here, but the end in particular reads this way:
Romans 8:32He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? 33Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. 34Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. 35Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. 37Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. 38For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 39Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
If you are a reader of this blog you, we most likely know each other. If this is so and you would like to discuss this matter further to either agree or even disagree, just give me a call and we’ll set something up. I’m always up for a cup of coffee and some good conversation.
Have a Good Friday.
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Train up a child in the way he should go
So, part of the daily routine with Jacob around here is to work on memory verses that he has been given from church. Occasionally, I’ll add in a verse that I think he might be ready to be able to understand instead of just reciting words. I am glad to say that some of the verses were initially over his head in terms of vocabulary or that contained a concept that he couldn’t quite grasp are now fodder for teachable moments.
Some days, like today, he’s just not feeling it. Where normally I could feed him the next word or two and he could spout off the rest of the verse, other days I have to nearly feed him every word. We wrestle during the verses or do something physically simultaneously to keep his interest up, but some days it’s all for naught.
Crystal is home sick today and got to witness this event and started laughing quietly to herself and I couldn’t understand why. She disappears for a minute and comes back telling me that I need to watch a video.
The verse I referenced is Proverbs 22:6 “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” which is a verse known to most parents who take their kids to church. It usually ranks right up there with Ephesians 6:1 “Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.” If parents only know one or two verses, it’s usually one of these. I don’t mind one bit spend our time nearly each day going over verses and such, but I would put this video closer to the “depart[ing] from it” end of things!
Anyway, it made me laugh l so I thought I would share.
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