Where is God?

Friday, September 23, 2022

Am I a God who is only close at hand?” says the Lord.  “No, I am far away at the same time.  Can anyone hide from me in a secret place?  Am I not everywhere in all the heavens and earth?” says the Lord.  Jeremiah 23:23-24

There are at least two different ways to interpret the question:  Where is God?  You can be asking about location, in the sense that you want to find God’s presence, either out of curiosity, or, more profoundly, out of need to know you’re not alone in this universe.  The second, and more publicly common way to ask, is the defiance motive…you’re asking about God’s location, or more accurately, his absence during an event that could have been prevented from becoming a tragedy.  It’s asking:  Where was God when my child died?  The first kind of interpretation is a seeker of God; the second is a judge of God.  Truth be told, it could always be both.

Some would deny ever being angry with God.  I’m not one of them…now!  I could never quite bring myself to admit it, but there have been those times.  One of those was when my grandmother died.  I loved Grandma Carrie.  She had a kind face, and was not above slipping a cookie in your hand, even just before dinnertime.  She was a patient sort; married to an alcoholic, she had to have the patience of Job.  When cancer took her from us, I cried for weeks.  As a pre-teen, anger was my emotional response to the grief that told me I would never see her again.  A lot older now, and, hopefully, a little wiser, I realize Russell, the child, was asking the defiant kind of question born of pain:  God…where were you when cancer took my Grandma? 

As a child I had to lay the blame for what was wrong in my life on someone.  Just as Adam passed along his guilt onto Eve, making God the culprit of Adam’s sin and failure for giving him that dangerous play toy, God was also to be my whipping boy.  He should have been there…and He wasn’t. 

Now, as an adult, with the blessing of a rearview mirror, the guidance of God’s Spirit through God’s Word, plus a whole lifetime of experience, the question I have no longer focuses on the whereabouts of God.  Life and God’s gentle guidance have taught me of His omnipresence in every moment and place I’ve ever walked.  Now the question is more appropriate:  Where is Russell?  Where is Russell’s mind and heart, in relationship to the God who is everywhere, sees everything, and understands every DNA molecule He used to fashion my body, and stamped on my invisible soul?  Mr. Wesley’s question:  How is it with your soul…is the question I now ask in the mirror every day.

For You Today

If you’ve been through some tough living, and you’re tempted to ask the judging question, it would be better to stand facing the mirror.  But if the pain is too great, go ahead and ask God where He’s been…He’s got big shoulders.  My experience is that He will gently remind you that He’s where He’s always been, right next to you, waiting for you to turn….so He can wrap His arms around you.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

In That Day and The Doily

[1] Images:  via Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

A Short Journey with Grief

 

Monday, April 25, 2022

If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.    

1 Corinthians 15:19

My friend and fellow-pastor, Charles, lost a dear friend some time ago, when she lost a struggle with incurable tumors.  Charles had become caregiver and counsellor to both Michelle and her parents.  It was an exhaustive battle that lasted more than a year.  You become weary driving hundreds of miles a week between Linwood and Durham.  With the doctors, Pastor Charles, and Michelle, a vibrant follower of Jesus Christ, waged a battle for her life.  Often it was only the bond of Christ that offered any hope or solace for what was coming.

Michelle died the week before Annual Conference for the Methodist Church.  Charles recalled:  I buried my friend on Sunday, left for annual conference on Monday, and played golf with my friend (Rick) on Tuesday instead of attending the meetings.  That day on the golf course, Charles was engulfed with guilt over doing something he normally enjoyed; it had only been two days since he buried his best friend. 

On one of the greens, Charles was preparing to putt, and 7 butterflies gathered around his feet and the golf ball.  He looked at his friend, Rick, and said:  It’s Michelle saying it’s ok.  The grief had been building for more than a year, as Charles was anticipating the loss of a treasured friend.  Suddenly it was released by the serendipitous gathering of butterflies.

So…was it Michelle?

There is a long human-family fascination with the beauty and presence of souls departed, and butterflies, which stretch across virtually all cultures and epochs of mankind’s search for meaning.  The Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and even Native American stories include religious accounts and beliefs of transformation, soul rebirth, resurrection, hope, and beauty personified in the winged harbingers of comfort we call butterflies:

The Blackfeet tribe believe butterflies are a conduit for peaceful dreams, and individuals use visual representations of butterflies to have a restful sleep.

The Aztecs believed the butterfly was a symbolic representation of the soul of the dead similar to other civilizations, but they also believed them to be symbols of resurrection and transformation.

Native American traditions are still followed to this day as every year, monarch butterflies migrate to Mexico around the Day of the Dead. The lore associates the butterflies with the returning souls of deceased ancestors and allows families to honor the souls and memory of their loved ones. [1]

Not everyone has an experience like my friend Charles and Rick shared that day with the butterflies on a North Carolina golf course.  But the comfort of a moment to release the weight of a year’s anticipatory grief, in the face of such loss, tells us it was certainly God at that moment caring for one of His own.

For You Today

If you’ve struggled with grief a little too long, I’m not recommending golf (it has its own struggle and brand of frustration).  I do commend, however, remembering we were never meant to live in these bodies forever. 

The worm, within its chrysalis stage of struggle and change, reminds us of transformation, where everything beautiful and ugly (or painful) in this life is made holy and eternal by the God who is behind, above, below, and alongside every sufferer.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title image: Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

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[1] This and following historical lore:  Symbolism of the Butterfly

Time to Beat the Bell

 

Friday, April 22, 2022

In the same way, you husbands must give honor to your wives.  Treat your wife with understanding as you live together.  She may be weaker than you are, but she is your equal partner in God’s gift of new life.  Treat her as you should so your prayers will not be hindered.  1 Peter 3:7

My friend and colleague’s father hated the little tinkle of the bell his wife rang to get him to come in the room.  She was bed-ridden, and it became the “intercom” buzzer.  He felt guilty when she finally passed, that he’d been irritable over that bell.  The problem was not a bell, but guilt over being frustrated.  Being stuck in grief and raking up every one of his shortcomings, or guilty piece of remorse over irritations, is a hard way to continue remembering your loved one with honor. 

Apostle Peter was a man whose conscience was glad to show him his failings repeatedly.  And he reminds us that guilt, left unaddressed will hinder your prayers; not saying your prayers, but having them get past the roof of your living room.  God doesn’t hear from a heart cluttered with unconfessed sin.

When his Dad expressed how guilty he felt over hating that bell, my friend put his arm around his dad and said:  You know, Dad, it’s ok if you want to beat that bell.  And that’s exactly what they did.  They took that bell out in the back yard, and, through tears, smashed it to pieces, sending it off to bell heaven.  Somehow beating that bell released all the pent-up guilt over a shortcoming of patience, which was nullifying the honor and memory of many times of answering the bell with service.  Beating that bell was a prayer of confession.

For You Today

“Beating the bell” is a picture of what we do in confession – we get it out in the backyard, in the daylight, clearly seen, acknowledged, and owned.  And then we smash the thing on God’s altar, just like you’d break an idol to pieces as an expression of faith in the one, true, living God.

Confession is good for the soul…if something is hindering your prayers, perhaps it’s time to beat the bell?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title image: Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

Hollow Times

 

Thursday, April 7, 2022

Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am in distress.  Tears blur my eyes.  My body and soul are withering away.  I am dying from grief; my years are shortened by sadness.  Sin has drained my strength; I am wasting away from within.  I am scorned by all my enemies and despised by my neighbors—even my friends are afraid to come near me.  When they see me on the street, they run the other way.  I am ignored as if I were dead, as if I were a broken pot.  

I have heard the many rumors about me, and I am surrounded by terror.  My enemies conspire against me, plotting to take my life.  But I am trusting you, O Lord, saying, “You are my God!”  My future is in your hands.  Rescue me from those who hunt me down relentlessly.  Let your favor shine on your servant.  In your unfailing love, rescue me.  Psalm 31:9-16

I’m not so certain that there can ever truly be a little case of depression.  Depression is the prologue to hollow insides of a human.  Being in the “hollow times” is the draining thing the Psalmist describes, punctuated by grief and regret.  Set apart, like a broken pot behind the garden shed, depression magnifies the hollowness within gnawing at any memory of what life was, once upon a time. 

Strangely enough, hollowness of mind, body, and soul is, at the same time, despised and feared, as well as the embarkment platform of repentance.  The Psalmist describes the cause of his emptiness as sin…drained my strength.  This confession, from the depths of the hollow man can only be genuine, when all strength, reason, and human resources have been exhausted. 

In Jesus’ sermon of the Beattitudes he holds forth the essence of the hollow beginnings of blessedness:

God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.  Matthew 5:3

At the risk of skipping over a treatise on humility (poverty of spirit, as contrasted with depression) the “poverty” of a life emptied of any reason to still participate in breathing, can turn God-blessed, a veritable turnkey to the Kingdom’s door.  It is poverty of a depressed soul with nothing to offer, save trusting in the mercy of He who sits on Heaven’s throne.  Hollowness is the launch pad for being filled. 

Have you ever tried to stuff a little more into something that was already overflowing?  Or, have you tried to take a little more out of somewhere that was already completely empty?  The Psalmist’s mantra is a theology of emptiness; the glass is neither half-empty, nor half-full; it is, as he said, reduced to broken shards, thrown-out behind the tool shed.  It can’t receive, nor can it give.  It is depression that is stuck in empty meaninglessness. 

I have known the hollow times.  Sparing the details, it was the kindness of caring souls pointing in the direction of God’s open, merciful arms, which allowed me a ray of hope.  My future seemed like a thick, black curtain, behind which there stood an impenetrable brick wall.  But when I called on him, trusting and leaning entirely on His grace, the curtain dropped, and the depression wall began to crumble. 

For You Today

If life has driven you into the hollow times, and your cup is empty and dry, remember the hot sand on the beach is only a few steps from the cooling waters.

[If you are suffering from depression there are caring professionals available to help.  If you have not found one, don’t give up.  I invite you to send me a message (RBrownworth@gmail.com).  I can listen or point you to help]

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title image: Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

The Many Faces of Hope

 

Wednesday, March 17, 2021

Some wandered in the wilderness, lost and homeless.  Hungry and thirsty, they nearly died.  “Lord, help!” they cried in their trouble, and he rescued them from their distress.  He led them straight to safety, to a city where they could live.  Psalm 107:4-7

This Psalm celebrates Israel’s history, of course.  But it is also a story told and retold throughout the generations of humanity; it is the story of distress and deliverance, rags to riches, dungeon to throne, love-lost to reunion, blindness to sight, crippled to leaping, and in a thousand other themes.  This is God’s story of the bleak impossible turned real, the ageless, magnificent story of hope and salvation.

Monday of this week the ultimate working-out of this story made its way into my line of sight…again.  We buried a church member.  Linda was not pretentious or mean-spirited.  She wasn’t over-demanding or unduly-proud (other than her love of Alabama’s Crimson Tide football team!).  She was just Linda, mother, grand & great grandmother.  She loved her family and football!

It is humbling to stand before any congregation with the awesome charge to present the Gospel of Jesus Christ…but particularly so when the charge for the preacher is to say a word of comfort to a grieving family.  The words are in the church’s worship book, about why we gather, that in pain we may find comfort, in sorrow hope, in death resurrection.  Sometimes that comfort, hope, and resurrection come in just gathering, or the preacher’s words, or a child’s reciting a memory verse.  Monday, for me, it came in the son-in-law’s song.  With a resounding baritone, Rick sang Celebrate Me Home.  The words are particularly filled with faith in God which overcome pain and sorrow.  It was almost impossible to get off my chair and continue.  Here are the words he sang:

When the time comes and I am standing at the river

That separates the two worlds that I love

Torn between my precious friends and my family

And the place of peace that's waiting up above

Hold my hand and stay there by my side, And when I finally step into the tide

Celebrate me home!  Celebrate me there

Celebrate me in that land of wonder where nothing can compare

Celebrate me in that place Celebrate me saved by grace

Don't just sit and weep because I'm gone…Celebrate me Home

I have spent most of my life on earth preparing

To take the trip from here to Heaven's throne

With the Shield and Word of God to guide me 

Its a comfort knowing I am not alone

So when I take my final fleeting breath  And fade into the gentle sleep of death

Celebrate me home!  Celebrate me there

Celebrate me in that land of wonder where nothing can compare

Celebrate me in that place  Celebrate me saved by grace

Don't just sit and weep because I'm gone  Celebrate me Home

No more broken dreams  No more tears to cry  Into my Father's arms I'll fly  Celebrate me home!  Celebrate me there

Celebrate me in that land of wonder where nothing can compare

Celebrate me in that place  Celebrate me saved by grace

Don't just sit and weep because I'm gone  Celebrate me Home![1]

This is more than just a tear-jerker, designed to create a momentary flood of emotion.  This is a Christ-centered statement of faith, and the fondest prayer I know for the ones I love.  It bridges the divide between longing for Heaven, and the connection of here.

For You Today

If you’ve lost someone, and you’ve run out of ways to stop hurting, take a few minutes to re-read the words of this song.  Listen to it sung.[2]  Discuss these words with another friend, or your pastor.  This is why God gave us The Church…so we can move beyond grieving as those who have no hope.  ^{1 Thessalonians 4:13} 

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com    Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©

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[1] Celebrate Me Home, Joel Lindsey, Wayne Haun, performed by The Perrys, 2012, (Songlyrics.com)

[2] Go here to listen to The Perrys’ version on YouTube.com

Seeing Trouble and Sorrow

Thursday, April 23, 2020

Death wrapped its ropes around me; the terrors of the grave overtook me.  I saw only trouble and sorrow.  Psalm 116:3

You cannot watch a news program without sensing what the Psalmist wrote about death’s ropes we’re currently experiencing in the wake of the deadly COVID-19 virus.  The terrors of the grave are being counted like cattle passing through the slaughter pens.  The news channels have the counter graphics listing how many infected, how many deaths; we tabulate the terror, moment by moment.

I am nearly 73 years old and I have never met my aunts, who were twins.  They were born shortly before they died in the 1918 Influenza Pandemic.  All I have to know about them is a few sketchy details told me by family members and this picture showing a strong family resemblance on my mother’s side.  And, my reaction to all of this, more than 100 years after these baby aunts of mine became part of a frightening statistic (estimated at somewhere between 50 and 100 million deaths worldwide[1]), is a sense of trouble and sorrow.  It troubles me that I know so little about these babes who are elder sisters to my mother; it holds me in sorrow for the grave shadows we see cast over cradles of those who have hardly begun to live.

My aunts died 30 years before I was born, but the grief is still there for having never met them; there is a sense of loss that mingles with those who suffer the loss of their blood.  From every record of wars, we count the dead.  We mourn the losses of senseless violence in the streets, unthinking carelessness of unsecured firearms, and infanticide of the abortion clinics…chosen grief, trouble and sorrow.  To be certain, Adam and Eve still mourn the loss of Abel to violence, and Cain to his own sin.

But the one who suffered and grieved most in the eons of time and eternity is Yahweh, Almighty God, who, grieved over the suffering of humankind.  After all, what parent will not have a part of the death of his child?  Who is unmoved by the suffering of a loved one?  Multiply that by the billions of souls God has created and watched to the grave.

And what, pray tell, does this all-powerful God do about all this suffering?  Amid the worst of it God gives hope…and even joy.  Peter understood that:

You love him even though you have never seen him.  Though you do not see him now, you trust him; and you rejoice with a glorious, inexpressible joy.  The reward for trusting him will be the salvation of your souls.  This salvation was something even the prophets wanted to know more about when they prophesied about this gracious salvation prepared for you.  They wondered what time or situation the Spirit of Christ within them was talking about when he told them in advance about Christ’s suffering and his great glory afterward.  They were told that their messages were not for themselves, but for you.  And now this Good News has been announced to you by those who preached in the power of the Holy Spirit sent from heaven.  It is all so wonderful that even the angels are eagerly watching these things happen.  1 Peter 1:8-12

To go along with my sense of trouble, sorrow, and loss of the aunts I will never truly know until I enter Heaven’s gates and finally see them, there is that inexpressible, yet joyful knowing the angels are eagerly looking forward to God’s full reunion and restoration of all things.  They can’t wait to see me, and see all my family, and the human family completely at home, completely fulfilled in the glory of Christ.

For You Today

As you watch the counters tick off how many infected, and how many deaths, remember the statistic for death is 1 out of every 1; our mortality is assured by the fact that we are human and it is appointed that we shall not live forever in these bodies.  But, just as assuredly, our eternity of joy with God is securely offered at the cross.  For those who place their trust in Jesus the counters are sad for today, but a strong reminder of God’s love and power to save us from trouble and sorrow.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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Title Image:  Pixabay.com      Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For other posts on 1 Peter see Rotweiler Joy and Joy Unspeakable and Better Than Baby Toes and New

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[1] 1918 H1N1 Virus Pandemic – CDC website

UnBroken

[1]

Thursday, October 3, 2019

The thought of my suffering and homelessness is bitter beyond words.  I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss.  Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this:  The faithful love of the Lord never ends!  His mercies never cease.  Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning.  I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!”  The Lord is good to those who depend on him, to those who search for him.  So it is good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord.  Lamentations 3:19-26[2]

Jeremiah, fierce, sword-wielding prophet, is the author of Lamentations.  He is the one we find wallowing in his suffering and homelessness, grieving over his loss.  Jeremiah’s homelessness is not what we’d picture in our time, sleeping on park benches, begging on street corners, tents in the woods or nights huddled in an old abandoned car.  Jeremiah was in prison; his home and the entire nation was occupied by the enemy.  His was a broken nation.  His conclusion, that it is good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord was not a spiritual high ground…Jeremiah had no choice. 

Suffering, and what you do with it, have filled libraries of books for generations.  Ever since Job’s loss of his family, wealth, friends, and place in the community, coupled with the boils that covered his body in torment, humankind has searched for the why of suffering, and the what of how to deal with it.

My friend, Bert Cavaletto learned to deal with Jeremiah and Job’s suffering.  Bert was a pilot in World War 2 who spent a long time in a prison camp.  Among a myriad of coping skills developed to ward off despair, Bert constructed a model ship which he completed while hiding it from his captors.  I saw the ship just before Bert died in 2014.  There was such painstaking detail; each plank of the deck, turnbuckle, stanchion and battens were either carved or fashioned with tools that would have been seen as weapons by the guards.  While it was a diversion from the reality of being a prisoner, this ship was also Bert’s sanity project, and the expression of genuine hope in salvation.  Like Jeremiah, who purchased a piece of property while in prison against the day when he might be released to a freed homeland – something which he never got to see, however – Bert’s ship represented the freedom one experiences on open seas.  It was his statement of hope!  It was his unbroken spirit claiming the promise of God that he was not forgotten.

I have come to understand that unforgotten and unbroken go together.  They belong and hold to one another like night frames day, and young meets old.  They are as integral to understanding God’s love as breathing is to staying alive in a prison camp, whether it be a military prison, or the prison of our thoughts and unrequited dreams.

From the mouth of Jesus (by way of John the Revelator) we hear the words of our Creator’s promise that suffering faithfully leads to the strength that only brokenness brings, a crown of life to wear long after a dying world passes away:

Don’t be afraid of what you are about to suffer.  The devil will throw some of you into prison to test you.  You will suffer for ten days.  But if you remain faithful even when facing death, I will give you the crown of life.  “Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches.  Whoever is victorious will not be harmed by the second death.  Revelation 2:10-11

For You Today

How else can you genuinely face and overcome the brokenness, emptiness, hurt and crushing blows of lost hope, except to trust that God has not lied?  This was the experience of the apostle Paul and my friend, Bert:

We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed.  We are perplexed, but not driven to despair.  We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God.  We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed.  Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies.  2 Corinthians 4:8-10

This is what it means to be battered, and yet unbroken!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image:  Russell Brownworth photographs     Unless noted, Scripture used from The New Living Translation©

[2] For another post on this text and the topic of grieving see:  Hard Thoughts