flashback humor
rush3k
Does God Care?
posted 20-Apr-2009, Monday
In my version of christianity and catholicism, it is okay to ask the hard questions. Granted, we might not always know the answers, or be satisfied with these answers, but questioning our faith on a daily basis gives us reasons to urgently seek more and more answers as we grow closer and closer in understanding with the creator.
A few weeks ago, around the third week of March precisely, in my faith-related discussions with other catholics, we agreed that to have better insight to God, it was important to understand why He does the things He does. Might I note here that the heretics that were part of the conversation continued without ceasing to scream and make an impression on everyone on how we must take everything by faith. Faith without work is death. Back to the main discuss, one of the questions that came up was why God allow great calamities to befall His children. Everyone had an interesting answer. Someone alluded to it being the fault of the government of those nations where children suffer and die from starvation, implying that while those children will make it to heaven, the government officials have certainly booked their places in the hottest part of hell. Interesting arguement, and I laughed without respite.
I got my answer. God answered the question for me. This is not the first time I've felt God talking directly to me, but this one filled me the most with goosebumps than any of my other divine experiences. Our Daily Bread (ODB) is one of those daily bible verse/prayer type things I grew up with. I'm definitely not an everyday ODBer, maybe once in a long while I'll pop in there, read from the good book, hear the passages and try to meditate on them. So sometime either in late March or very early April, after been affected by a chain of unfortunate events and questioning my faith again, I went on ODB and the one of the passage headings that immediately caught my eye was "Does God Care?"
This is a repost, all copyrights belong to ODB.
March 31, 2009
Does God Care?
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READ: Mark 14:32-42
[Jesus] began to be troubled and deeply distressed. Then He said to them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death.” —Mark 14:33-34
One dreadful year, three of my friends died in quick succession. My experience of the first two deaths did nothing to prepare me for the third. I could do little but cry.
I find it strangely comforting that when Jesus faced pain, He responded much as I do. It comforts me that He cried when His friend Lazarus died (John 11:32-36). That gives a startling clue into how God must have felt about my friends, whom He also loved.
And in the garden the night before His crucifixion, Jesus did not pray, “Oh, Lord, I am so grateful that You have chosen Me to suffer on Your behalf.” No, He experienced sorrow, fear, abandonment, even desperation. Hebrews tells us that Jesus appealed with “vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death” (5:7). But He was not saved from death.
Is it too much to say that Jesus Himself asked the question that haunts us: Does God care? What else can be the meaning of His quotation from that dark psalm: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Ps. 22:1; Mark 15:34).
Jesus endured in His pain because He knew that His Father is a God of love who can be trusted regardless of how things appear to be. He demonstrated faith that the ultimate answer to the question Does God care? is a resounding Yes! — Philip Yancey
The aching void, the loneliness,
And all the thornclad way,
To Thee I turn with faith undimmed
And ’mid the darkness pray. —O. J. Smith
When we know that God’s hand is in everything, we can leave everything in God’s hand.