Tag: miracles

Where Is God in My Suffering? (Psalm 22:23-31)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
Crucifixion, by Georges Rouault, 1937

“Praise him, you servants of the Lord!
    Honor him, you descendants of Jacob!
    Worship him, you people of Israel!
He does not neglect the poor or ignore their suffering;
    he does not turn away from them,
    but answers when they call for help.”

In the full assembly I will praise you for what you have done;
    in the presence of those who worship you
    I will offer the sacrifices I promised.
The poor will eat as much as they want;
    those who come to the Lord will praise him.
May they prosper forever!

All nations will remember the Lord.
    From every part of the world they will turn to him;
    all races will worship him.
The Lord is king,
    and he rules the nations.

All proud people will bow down to him;
    all mortals will bow down before him.
Future generations will serve him;
    they will speak of the Lord to the coming generation.
People not yet born will be told:
    “The Lord saved his people.” (Good News Translation)

I find that a great deal of truth and reality in this world is something of a mystery and a paradox. Christianity, especially, is a religion of paradox, in my opinion. For example, God is Three – Father, Son, and Spirit – but God is One. Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine, at the same time, all the time. And when it comes to the spiritual life, suffering exists, and God is sovereign and in control of all things.

This then, is what prompts many people to question if there is really a God – since so much suffering exists throughout the world. Yet, it’s necessary to maintain the tension that hard circumstances, adversity, and difficulty in the form of awful suffering, and the preeminence of the Lord God almighty, both exist without taking anything away from either of them.

The severity of suffering, nor the supreme majesty of God, need to be watered down in any way in order to try and make sense of our existential situations.

“Suffering” is a word we would like to avoid. Even saying or reading the word might make some folks cringe. Suffering? No thanks. I think I’ll pass on that. Yet, something inside of us instinctively knows we cannot get around it. Everyone suffers in some way. It is endemic to the human condition that at times we will suffer physically, financially, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. 

That’s why I believe there is so much talk within some Christian circles about miracles. It’s more than understandable:

  • a chronic pain sufferer wants relief, so she prays for a miracle of health
  • a small business owner is bleeding financially, and looks to God for an immediate miracle of wealthy clients
  • a beloved senior saint knows she is afflicted with Alzheimer’s, so she prays for the miracle of deliverance, even to be taken home to be with the Lord
  • a young adult finds himself in the throes of depression and has tried everything to cope and get out of it, so he petitions God for a miracle out of the deep black hole
  • a believer in Jesus keeps experiencing a besetting sin and cannot get over it, so she looks to God for the miracle of not struggling any more with it

These scenarios and a thousand other maladies afflict people everywhere. There are a multitude of stories out there. Folks who have experienced a miracle tell of their wonderful deliverance. But what about the rest? Those without the miracle? Do they have a lack of faith? Has God forgotten them?

Oh, my, no! God sees, and God knows. God is acquainted with suffering. Jesus knows it first-hand. Remember that it was Jesus who said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1; Mark 15:34; Matthew 27:46)

Even Jesus cried out in his suffering. But there was no deliverance coming for him.  There was, however, deliverance coming for us.

Sometimes the greatest miracle and deliverance of all is to be freed from the need for a miracle. The reason God doesn’t just offer immediate relief from everyone’s suffering and bring a divine miracle is that the Lord is doing something else: Walking with us through our suffering. God oftentimes has plans and purposes for us that are well beyond our understanding. 

We simply are not privy to everything in God’s mind.

We may not get the miracle we desire. Yet, what we will get without fail, is God’s provision and steadfast love all the way through the suffering.

Where is God in your suffering? Right beside you. Jesus is suffering with you. You are not crying alone; Christ weeps with you.

Let, then, those who suffer, eat and be full. Let them be satisfied with the portion God has given them. And, what’s more, let them offer praise to the God who is squarely beside them in every affliction and each trouble.

God Almighty, you are the One who knows suffering and affliction better than anyone. I admit I don’t often understand what in the world you are doing or not doing in my life and in the lives of those I love. Yet, I admit that I have found in you the comfort, encouragement, and strength to live another day in my trouble. For this, I praise you, in the Name of Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Have Some Spiritual Discernment (Deuteronomy 13:1-5)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
Prophet, by Théophile Alexandre Steinlen, 1902

Prophets or interpreters of dreams may promise a miracle or a wonder, in order to lead you to worship and serve gods that you have not worshiped before. Even if what they promise comes true, do not pay any attention to them. The Lord your God is using them to test you, to see if you love the Lord with all your heart. Follow the Lord and honor him; obey him and keep his commands; worship him and be faithful to him. 

But put to death any interpreters of dreams or prophets that tell you to rebel against the Lord, who rescued you from Egypt, where you were slaves. Such people are evil and are trying to lead you away from the life that the Lord has commanded you to live. They must be put to death, in order to rid yourselves of this evil. (Good News Translation)

It’s a foolish notion that a servant of God can have a moonlighting gig with another god. A shortsighted philosophy believes that worshiping God on the Sabbath allows one to then do whatever they want on the other six days. And a downright deadly act is to become enamored with a miracle and then follow the miracle worker who did it, even though they want nothing to do with devotion to the Lord.

It only takes one bad apple to spoil the whole bushel basket of them. Just one rotten egg in a six egg omelet will ruin the entire thing. And one bad prophet amongst the people will end up destroying the congregation. Evil isn’t something to dabble with; instead, wickedness is something to rid yourself of altogether.

“If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.” Jesus (Matthew 5:29-30, NIV)

Jesus declared that believers must take decisive, drastic, and radical action against idolatry. Serving other gods, along with the one true God, requires an amputation. The biblical text of both Testaments leaves us no room to believe that it’s okay to dabble in things that the Lord condemns. And if we think we are not hurting anybody to hold onto such a thought, we very much need to think again.

True prophets and preachers don’t lead people into idolatry, no matter how spectacular their omens, wonders, or miraculous signs. False prophets and preachers exist only to test the sincerity of a believer’s love for the Lord. Israel was to take decisive and radical measures to rid themselves of false gods. Failing to do so would certainly lead to idolatry.

These are the regulations and the case laws that you must carefully keep in the fertile land the Lord, your ancestors’ God, has given to you to possess for as long as you live on that land:

You must completely destroy every place where the nations that you are displacing worshipped their gods—whether on high mountains or hills or under leafy green trees. Rip down their altars and shatter their sacred stones. Burn their sacred poles with fire. Hack their gods’ idols into pieces. Wipe out their names from that place.

Don’t act like they did toward the Lord your God! (Deuteronomy 12:1-4, CEB)

Believers of every era need to learn that the occurrence of supernatural manifestations, and/or wild success in ministry, does not automatically authenticate the prophet or preacher.

Theology always takes precedence over miraculous signs and wonders. A growing church doesn’t necessarily mean that God’s favor rests upon it, anymore than a declining church signals God’s displeasure. This is why we are to never add to or take away from God’s Word to people. (Deuteronomy 12:32)

“It is the nature of false prophets to create a conscience where there is none, and to cause conscience to disappear where it does exist.”

Martin Luther

If Christians are ever invited to disobey and rebel against the words and ways of Jesus, they are to refuse the offer. This, of course, requires actually knowing God’s Word and handling the worship of God and the interpretation of God’s Word with great care, humility, and wisdom.

There are many times that false preachers are quite sincere, believing that they are proclaimers of truth, when they are really leading others astray. We are always to be students of Holy Scripture, consistently discerning the difference between truth and error, right and wrong. Let us be careful to avoid the situation of the believers in the New Testament book of Hebrews:

In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. (Hebrews 5:12-14, NIV)

Let’s be people who take the time and effort to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus; and be patient and humble enough to learn over time what truly pleases the Lord.

Blessed God, give your servant a discerning heart to govern, lead, and teach your people, so that we may all be able to distinguish between right and wrong, doing your divine will and obeying your divine commands, to the glory of Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Born to Die (Judges 13:2-24)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
The angel and Manoah, by Sadao Watanabe, 1972

There was a man from Zorah named Manoah. Manoah was from the family of Dan. His wife was not able to have children. The Messenger of the Lord appeared to her and said, “You’ve never been able to have a child, but now you will become pregnant and have a son. Now you must be careful. Don’t drink any wine or liquor or eat any unclean  food. You’re going to become pregnant and have a son. You must never cut his hair because the boy will be a Nazirite dedicated to God from birth. He will begin to rescue Israel from the power of the Philistines.”

The woman went to tell her husband. She said, “A man of God came to me. He had a very frightening appearance like the Messenger of God. So I didn’t ask him where he came from, and he didn’t tell me his name. He told me, ‘You’re going to become pregnant and have a son. So don’t drink any wine or liquor or eat any unclean food because the boy will be a Nazirite dedicated to God from the time he is born until he dies.’ ”

Then Manoah pleaded with the Lord, “Please, Lord, let the man of God you sent come back to us. Let him teach us what we must do for the boy who will be born.”

God did what Manoah asked. The Messenger of God came back to his wife while she was sitting out in the fields. But her husband Manoah was not with her. The woman ran quickly to tell her husband. She said, “The man who came to me the other day has just appeared to me again.”

Manoah immediately followed his wife. When he came to the man, he asked him, “Are you the man who spoke to my wife?”

“Yes,” he answered.

Then Manoah asked, “When your words come true, how should the boy live and what should he do?”

The Messenger of the Lord answered Manoah, “Your wife must be careful to do everything I told her to do. She must not eat anything that comes from the grapevines, drink any wine or liquor, or eat any unclean food. She must be careful to do everything I commanded.”

Manoah said to the Messenger of the Lord, “Please stay while we prepare a young goat for you to eat.”

But the Messenger of the Lord responded, “If I stay here, I will not eat any of your food. But if you make a burnt offering, sacrifice it to the Lord.” (Manoah did not realize that it was the Messenger of the Lord.)

Then Manoah asked the Messenger of the Lord, “What is your name? When your words come true, we will honor you.”

The Messenger of the Lord asked him, “Why do you ask for my name? It’s a name that works miracles.”

So Manoah took a young goat and a grain offering and sacrificed them to the Lord on a rock he used as an altar. While Manoah and his wife watched, the Lord did something miraculous. As the flame went up toward heaven from the altar, the Messenger of the Lord went up in the flame. When Manoah and his wife saw this, they immediately bowed down with their faces touching the ground.

The Messenger of the Lord didn’t appear again to Manoah and his wife. Then Manoah knew that this had been the Messenger of the Lord. So Manoah said to his wife, “We will certainly die because we have seen God.”

But Manoah’s wife replied, “If the Lord wanted to kill us, he would not have accepted our burnt offering and grain offering. He would not have let us see or hear all these things just now.”

So the woman had a son and named him Samson. The boy grew up, and the Lord blessed him. (God’s Word Translation)

The Sacrifice of Manoah, by Charles Blanc (1813-1882)

In the anticipation of Christ’s birth, we are reminded today that there have been extraordinary births in history – a sign that the delivery of a baby will lead to a deliverance of the people.

The ancient Israelites were yet again in one of their downward spirals into apostasy. As a result, their arch-nemesis, the Philistines, had domination over them. The tribe of Dan – from which Samson was born into – was geographically situated in such a way that they would have borne the brunt of Philistine oppression.

In the case of miraculous births in Holy Scripture, an angel comes to announce the coming child. These sorts of situations always have an infertile woman who was not planning on becoming a mother. And in many cultures, including Israel, a son born to a woman who was childless for a long time is recognized as a particularly special gift from God.

There are typically, therefore, high expectations that such a special child is destined for great things in this life. Indeed, Samson would become an extraordinary person by initiating the deliverance of Israel from the Philistines.

Samson, according to the angel, was not only to make sure he never eats any unclean food, but also was to be set apart from his very conception as a Nazirite – one who has the special rules of abstinence from alcohol, cutting the hair, and touching corpses. (Numbers 6:1-8)

From the very beginning of Samson’s existence in the womb of his mother, the Spirit of God was with him and began empowering him for his destiny of deliverance.

Since we know the rest of the story, as contained in the Bible, we understand that the way the deliverance of Israel came was not by any sort of conventional means. It was a rather circuitous and complicated set of circumstances and decisions which brought about Israel’s freedom from oppression.

In a similar way, the deliverance which Jesus secured – not only for Israel, but according to Christianity, for all nations – came about through unexpected and tragic circumstances. This is why many Christians will state that Jesus was born to die – because his death, like Samson’s, brought about a great saving event that vastly outdid anything done during life.

Perhaps you existentially know something in this season about such bittersweet circumstances and events. It could be that you are experiencing a situation that is both very sad and quite joyous at the same time.

So, may you, especially, in this time of year, find satisfaction in your grief, and contentment in your lament. May the angel’s announcement stir in your soul the peace that passes all understanding. May the Lord be with you, my friend.

Soli Deo Gloria

All Who Come and Touch are Made Well (Matthew 14:34-36)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment

They crossed the lake and came to land at Gennesaret, where the people recognized Jesus. So they sent for the sick people in all the surrounding country and brought them to Jesus. They begged him to let the sick at least touch the edge of his cloak; and all who touched it were made well. (Good News Translation)

Jesus showed up. That’s all it took. The very presence of Christ emboldened people to act. And these were not just the religious folk. They were on the other side of the lake – which for us means the other side of the tracks. In other words, the people of Gennesaret were poor and needy with lots of sick persons, as well as spiritually pagan.

This wasn’t a place that pious people visited. It was far from being a destination vacation spot. But it was just the sort of place that Jesus would visit. It was for people like those at Gennesaret that Christ came.

Jesus Recognized

In the previous story of the disciples on the lake during a storm, Jesus walked out on the water to them. When they saw him, they didn’t recognize him. But here, in today’s story, a bunch of people who weren’t following Jesus around, knew who he was straightaway.

One of the great ironies of the New Testament Gospels is that Jesus often got a cool reception of unbelief amongst the religious insiders in his own homeland, while tending to receive faith from spiritual outsiders in heathen places. Christ initiated a seismic shift and a great transfer of replacing the insiders with the outsiders. This sort of activity was so spiritually scandalous and cataclysmic that it eventually got Jesus killed.

“Many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.”

Jesus (Matthew 19:30, NIV)

People Respond

The people of Gennesaret demonstrated their faith by acting on the sight of Jesus amongst them. They sent others out into the surrounding countryside to let them know that Jesus was here. That was all it took for the rural folk to not only come but to bring all their sick friends and family with them. Belief abounded, that this man, Jesus, could do the impossible work of curing and healing.

And this is precisely the sort of mentality and heart attitude Jesus was looking for. In telling his parable of the soils, Christ wanted the response of the fourth soil: To not only hear and acknowledge, but to also take the words and ways of God into one’s life in such a way that growth and development happens, fruit matures, and a harvest of righteousness, justice, and peace occurs.

“The seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:23, NIV)

Jesus Makes All the People Well

The most “touching” thing to me in this short account of Christ encountering the people of Gennesaret is that every single person who came to Jesus was made well, without exception.

Such was the faith of the people, that they neither needed nor expected Jesus to come and lay his hands on them or to even say anything. They simply believed that if they could but touch the fringe of his cloak, healing and wellness would happen.

And the people weren’t just seeking their own betterment, but were concerned for everyone they knew who needed help. Whether there was superstition mingled with the faith is really of no concern; just a smidgeon of faith in Jesus is potent and powerful enough to effect a complete makeover of a person.

Moreover, there wasn’t simply individual and isolated instances of wholeness and healing; there was a mass level miracle, a giant group touch of healing and health.

Jesus welcomed them all, and allowed all the people to touch. Most of us don’t want a bunch of strangers touching us or our clothes, at all. That’s too weird and creepy, and likely makes us uncomfortable. What’s more, no respectable person would ever think of touching a rabbi – especially women. That sort of thing was religiously and culturally unacceptable.

Another irony we see is that the crossing of purity boundaries and laws which made people ritually impure is turned on it’s head. Instead, this kind of activity of people touching Christ made the impure folks pure. As something of a rule-breaker at heart, I find this reality refreshing. We need a lot more of it.

Jesus and People Today

Today’s Gospel lesson might seem a nice story that happened a very long time ago. We may also believe it doesn’t have much to do with me today. After all, Jesus isn’t bodily roaming the countryside today. We don’t see mass healings of people. In some places, we rarely see any healing at all from a direct result of faith. So, why even talk about this? Why bring it up? Do you just want to get my hopes up, only to dash them? Isn’t all this stuff pie-in-the-sky thinking, anyway?

Those are legitimate questions and concerns. And we ought not to disparage or make light of anyone asking them. All of us have likely encountered reaching out in faith without any healing or change of circumstance. Rather than going to one of two extremes, by either berating ourselves for a supposed failure of faith, or of discounting God altogether as a figment of the unenlightened mind, we can take a different approach.

The very nature of faith is contact, connection, and care. Faith is up close, relational, and involves touch. Faith is free, yet it is not cheap. Faith always involves a cost: vulnerability and intimacy. If we ever look for faith from afar and have no intention of getting up close and personal – so close as to touch the hem of a garment – then that which we seek will forever be elusive to us.

I’m not talking about a process or a plan that you can predictably access to get the result you want. Rather, I’m referring to real human contact and relationship that can only happen with being open about needs and wants, and is willing to expose one’s inner person to the outside world. I’m talking about putting away the false front we put up for others to see, and let the true self come out. Yes, it’s risky. Yes, it most likely will hurt. And yes, it will lead to healing.

When a person goes to a doctor for a pain they cannot get rid of, and get a diagnosis of needing surgery to deal with the hurt, we willingly allow the surgeon to create more pain for us by cutting into our body. We allow it because we understand that more pain leads to less pain.

And the same is true for our soul. Our broken hearts, our damaged emotions, our racing thoughts, and our hurting spirits need to experience the invisible scalpel of God. Divine intervention is often unpleasant – at least at first – but then later results in wellness for all who invite it’s touch.

May you come with vulnerable faith, confident hope, and active love, to the One who can help you realize your most intimate longings. Amen.