Lessons from Local Theater

Tonight we went to Africa!, a performance highlighting the music, culture, and dance of Africa. The performance is manned primarily by children from ages 4 to 20. The majority of the children have been adopted from various parts of the world. There were a couple of moments in Africa! that prompted me to open the laptop and ramble some thoughts.

Both of the moments caused me to step back beyond sitting in a theater while watching a performance in order to reflect on the promises of God. The first occurred when a number of the children came on stage carrying the national flags from their mother countries. I was hit with the picture of God’s heart for the nations and the fact that God is redeeming people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. He is gathering people together from radically different places, homes, and “normals”. God is in the process of the most amazing adoption story…He is bringing people from all corners of the globe into His family.

The second moment occurred during the final number of the night. In the background, the song “Stand by Me” was playing. The version that was used was, in a word, incredible. (Find it here) It mixed people singing from New Orleans, France, Amsterdam, South Africa, the Congo, Italy, and other places. It was amazing to see people from different backgrounds, nationalities, and languages joining together in a song. The thing that hit me, however, was again the reality of what God is putting together. In Revelation 7, the reality of eternity with Christ is people from every tribe, tongue, and nation praising God. The worship of God will resound throughout eternity and it will far exceed the awe of seeing people from multiple languages and nations singing “Stand by Me.” Today I am full of praises to God for His faithfulness in showing Himself in the midst of my everyday experiences. There is also a sober reminder that the work of reaching the nations is not completed. There are over 4,500 people groups that have never heard the name of Jesus. The chorus of heaven is eager to add their harmony. What part can you play?

If God is Good….Part 2

The last post was a little long, so I decided to split it up. I want to circle back to one key idea that is found in our question, “If God is good…”. It is the notion of justice that is found in each of our hearts. Any situation that causes us to question God’s goodness is preying upon our understanding of God’s justice. In other words, our reaction becomes, “If God is good, this shouldn’t happen.” We feel like justice has been undermined in some sense. Whether it is seeing the innocent being taken advantage of, the rich becoming richer at the expense of the poor, or a child becoming terminally ill, our reaction often hits upon the theme of justice. If we were in charge, those things wouldn’t happen. I touched on this a little bit in the last post but the reality of the situation is that God is at work even in the midst of awful circumstances.

On a different note, however, I want to play out our hearts a little bit more. I want to step back and ask the question, “What if God intervened exactly the way we demanded every time we saw something we didn’t like?” You probably don’t see a problem with this. The world would be a better place if God did exactly what you expected all of the time. The problem is that if we step back a little bit, this really isn’t what we want at all. We want the comfort of knowing that our family, our friends, and our problems will be taken care of in the way that we want and expect. But do we really want God to intervene everywhere that suffering and evil are found? Your gut reaction is probably, “Yeah, I would love that!!!”

The problem is that we don’t want God to forcibly change our hearts every time we have a thought or action that is contrary to Him. We want Him to change everybody else, conforming them to our idea of what justice is. We want others to change while God gives us the comfort of being free from suffering. But we don’t really want God to change us by force. We don’t want God to force change except for when we want Him to. We are control freaks. We are sinners and we want God to do things our way.

If you think of the example of Job (strongly suggested here), everything about our sense of justice screams in frustration at the thought of a righteous man, Job, losing his family, his wealth, and his health in the span of a few hours. Our hearts cry out, “He is righteous. He doesn’t deserve this.” In Job 40, we see a different picture. Job has voiced his frustration that the righteous suffer. His friends have told him that he needs to repent because surely sin is at the heart of his personal suffering. Beginning in Job 38, God calls Job out. God identifies Himself as the Creator and Sustainer of all things and asks if Job has the knowledge to be God. In Job 40:7-9 we see a key in God’s questioning of Job:

“Dress for action like a man; I will question you, and you make it known to me. Will you even put me in the wrong? Will you condemn me that you may be in the right? Have you an arm like God, and can you thunder with a voice like His?

There is no clean way to question God’s goodness without elevating ourselves and debasing God. This isn’t to say that there are extremely, extremely difficult situations and realities of life that might tempt us to believe that God is not near or that God does not care. My prayer for you is that as you face these incredibly dark and trying realities that you might seek the Lord and find Him rather than crying out for an idol of justice that is carved from your own image and your own thoughts. Be encouraged; God is not idle. He has intervened and He hears your cries. He is good and He is still doing good. Look no further than the cross on Calvary and the blood that cleanses sinful hearts.

If God is Good….Part 1

“If God is good, why would He allow this to happen?” This question lies at the heart of many people. It hits the hardest in the midst of personal heartache and strife. It might also surface when watching the news or when hearing of something horrible. How could a loving God allow bad things to happen? This is not a meaningless question. Our answer to this question might very well lead to belief…or unbelief. Our wrestling with the question of God’s goodness in the midst of human suffering sheds light on what we think about God.

At the risk of over simplifying the matter, maybe part of the problem is that we are trained to say that God is good without ever thinking through how God is good; specifically how God is good in the midst of suffering. When troubling life experiences and suffering directly impact us, simply saying a foundation-less ”God is good” no longer suffices. I would like to make an observation about our perception of God’s goodness and challenge you to think differently about God’s goodness in the midst of suffering.

When we question God’s goodness, we are saying that we prefer God to intervene in order to stop suffering. Not just any suffering, our suffering. Maybe the suffering of a loved one. We want God to forcibly step in and change circumstances. We want God to strike down dictators, stop drunk drivers, heal the sick, slap our enemies upside the head, and perform countless other interventions. We want God to step in and make things right before they go wrong. There is an inward cry and groan for things to be made perfect. This is a good desire. We want perfection. We demand perfection.

The problem is that everywhere we look, we see imperfection. We see imperfection because sin, our sin, has brought the curse of imperfection upon us. Instead of seeing the collective rebellion of humanity as the cause of suffering, we blame God. We blame God for not intervening and stopping evil and suffering. What we don’t realize while we are leveling accusations against God’s goodness is that God has intervened. God sent Jesus to take the totality of human imperfection, rebellion, sin, and suffering upon Himself. The perfect one bore the judgment that is rightfully deserved by imperfect sinners so that through the blood of Christ, perfect redemption might come.

The problem with this is that imperfection continues to exist until Christ returns and all things are finally and forever set right. We still suffer. We still experience heartache. We still suffer loss. We still cry. Even as we experience the continual redemption of God we see the fallout of sin. We groan inwardly for the day that every tear is wiped away. Until then we have the hope of a God who intervened and who brought perfection to us, imperfect sinners. I pray that you see God’s faithfulness even in the midst of depravity and that you are encouraged by the perfect sacrifice of God.

Stay tuned for part 2…

Looking Forward

Inasmuch as I have kicked around the idea of writing an “end of the year reflective post” for 2011, I have decided instead to share my thoughts on 2012. My thoughts regarding 2012 are born out of the experiences of 2011, but I think it best to avoid vomiting 2011 all over you. 2011 was the single most difficult year of our lives. We experienced the high of bringing our son home and we experienced the low of losing a child through miscarriage. We experienced the high of seeing God’s call to missions begin to play out in our lives and experienced the low of leaving our first church. We have experienced the high of growing together as a married couple but have also experienced the low of realizing that this kind of growth comes through intense pressure, through disappointment, and at times through tears.

We have experienced the joy of rejoicing with family over bringing home a baby and have experienced the sadness over disappointing family by pursuing a future as international missionaries. We have come to know the Lord in a whole new way because of the pants-kicking which was 2011. Even as I write this post, I cringe at the vulnerability of sharing our experiences. We feel burned, we feel hurt, we feel cheated, we feel disappointed, we feel dazed, we feel off-balance, and yet we feel hope. We have realized the promises of God even in the midst of suffering. The hurt is not over. The hurt may never fully be over…and yet through the hurt we have experienced the goodness of God.

Oops…I accidentally talked about 2011. When I look forward to 2012 my prayer is that God continues to “wreck” us and “break” us. My prayer is that we would not become too comfortable, too well off, or too adjusted that we fail to see God working in our midst. The pain, the hurt, and the disappointment of 2011 have led us to the feet of Jesus. Having experienced such a grace as this makes me thankful for our circumstances and for the manner in which God has made Himself known to us. We might not be comfortable and things might not have gone as planned…but our cup runs over with the goodness and mercy of God.

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