Suffering

"For, in the same fire, gold gleams and straw smokes; under the same flail the stalk is crushed and the grain threshed; the lees are not mistaken for oil because they have issued from the same press. So, too, the tide of trouble will test, purify, and improve the good, but beat, crush, and wash away the wicked. So it is that, under the weight of the same affliction, the wicked deny and blaspheme God, and the good pray to Him and praise Him. The difference is not in what people suffer but in the way they suffer. The same shaking that makes fetid water stink makes perfume issue a more pleasant odor." St. Augustine

Suffering is never just suffering. I’ll tell you right now that I have colleagues who disagree with me. They say, “God would never allow . . . just to . . .”


My only problem with suffering as sometimes “just happening” is that it makes my pain meaningless and trivializes my agony. Granted, I have struggled with the place of suffering in my own life. I have stood beside the deathbed of members of my congregations over the years and thought to myself, “I can fathom no purpose for all this pain.” There have been hard times in my own life that occurred years ago, and I still struggle to find a sense of meaning for those events.


However, the idea of meaningless pain, of sacrifice that has no honor or nobility, no sense of courage, or benefit for some other person or some Grand Cause seems the cruelest of jokes a creator could play on creation. It IS most difficult to fathom the reason and depths of the Almighty, to claim that we have been enlightened and now understand the path a certain course of events has followed.

I believe there are times the waiting for meaning is the purpose of the suffering itself. The struggle with God has meaning. We struggle. We doubt. Yet, we hold on in the midst of that doubt, crying aloud for our Savior to hold onto us before we are swept away.


Jesus cried out on the cross to discover some sense of meaning in the crucifixion. MY GOD! MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME! This gives us the tiniest glimpse of the suffering and aloneness Jesus went through that we might have salvation.


For us, there are times the “fire” is a refining fire that burns away all that is unnecessary or deadweight. There are other times when the same “fire” refines our spirit into the finest of gold, fit only for the table of the King. The suffering of Jesus was redemptive. It purchased our salvation. My suffering and your suffering is instructive, eliminating that which only slows us down on our journey or separates us from our Creator. It teaches us patience, reliance on the Spirit, and the need for mercy that only God can give.


As you suffer in this moment, is it the straw that is consumed or the gold that is made brilliant. Either way, you are in the hands of a loving, master craftsman who is making you into his loving image.

Pastor Craig

Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday – Today is Palm Sunday. It is a day we think about children. We think happy thoughts. Many churches have as a part of their worship service this morning some sort of processional, frequently involving children waving the palm branches. We tend to like those Holy Days that focus on the bright and upbeat, and we tend to try and transform those days that are darker into something a little more bright and cheery.

Palm Sunday is actually a mixture of both. Certainly, it is the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem to the cheers of the crowds, including the children. Palm Sunday could be a political activist’s day as well. When Jesus arrived at the temple, one of the very first things he did was to upset the established order. He kicked out all those who were using the worship tradition at the temple to line their own pockets and only allowed the contrite of heart in to worship. The Gospel of Mark goes on to tell us that Jesus stood in the temple with his whip and would not permit anyone to use the temple court as a shortcut to get from one side to the other. Imagine, walking along, deciding to take a shortcut through the temple complex so you didn’t have to work around the massive set of buildings and coming face-to-face with a crazed looking man with a whip who threatened to use it if you put one foot in the temple!

Palm Sunday, viewed in the entirety of Holy Week, also reminds us how unfaithful we can be. You see, it was these same people who proclaimed Jesus as the Messiah on Sunday who called for his execution, or, at best, stood by and did nothing to stop it on Friday. We are a fickle lot, aren’t we? We do tend to look for the best deal. We tend to have the same mob mentality that crucified Jesus. Yes, it is quite easy to say that we wouldn’t have been part of that vile mob. Even Peter vowed to lay down his life to follow Christ, only to run away and hide when called upon to confirm that he even knew who Jesus was.

The truth of the matter is that we get an opportunity to stand up for Jesus each and every day. Many of those days we choose, me included, to remain another face in the crowd. We remember the adage of sticking one’s neck out and tend to force our necks well down into our shoulders. The Scripture is clear that to live for Jesus is to set ourselves against the world and all that it holds dear. Now, that may not get us killed, but it will, often, put us at the center of the storm instead of just one of a mob.

However, there is good news in this message as well. It is not all doom and gloom and you as a worthless, God-hater. The Jesus that road into Jerusalem on that Sunday over 2000 years ago knew he would be betrayed, knew he would be denied, knew that he would die alone on that awful hill, and he knew he had to make it to that hill on that day in order to claim you as a brother or sister of his Heavenly Father. What wondrous love!

Pastor Craig

Tradition

Tradition – There is a tradition that is not worn out and tired. There is a ritual that has not grown old and out of date. There is a sacrament that still stirs the heart of those who partake of it and touches the soul of those who draw near.

It is not the magic that has gone out of the rite, but the heart that has grown old in the celebrant. Our sin has not grown less, oh, certainly not. Nor has God’s grace flagged and diminished. We have just grown accustomed to the whole lot of it.

There was a time, when you were much younger, that you used to go outside and marvel at the stars. You wondered how far away they were. You tired to make out the constellations that the ancients saw. You looked at the full moon and saw the man in it. Somewhere along the way the wonder passed out of life for many of us. That is how we know we have grown old.

Growing old can happen at any age. My grandfather never grew old. There was a movie, yes, an actual movie, of him driving up on the tractor beside the Wisconsin farm house in which he and my grandmother lived. In the movie there is snow on the ground as Grandpa hops down from the tractor and proceeds to unload the firewood from the trailer he is pulling. He throws it through a small door into the basement where he would later have to go and stack it neatly to fuel the furnace.

When we spent parts of our summers there the four grandkids would ask to watch the movies. Grandpa would play through all sorts of them, Christmases past, weddings, birthdays, on and on they would go. He knew the one we were waiting for, the one with the tractor and the firewood. That one was our favorite. Not because of the snow, after all, it’s Wisconsin, snow is measured in feet, not inches. Not because of the tractor, it was a farm. The tractor was standard issue with a farm. No, it was our favorite because it was a movie, a real movie, not a video tape of DVD. A movie, you can run backwards!

The logs would fly out from under the house. Each one caught by my grandfather and placed back on the wagon. Then the greatest feat of all! Grandpa would effortlessly hope all the way back up in the tractor seat as if he were a hot balloon! The thing is, I think Grandpa liked that movie every bit as much as we did.

Somewhere that movie as stored. It has been many years since I have seen it. My parents talked about getting them all put on tapes, and then, later, DVD’s. But, no one ever has. I think that is because it wouldn’t be the same. You see, the movie is just an old man unloading firewood, but run it backwards, and it’s Grandpa.

Spring has come when all things become reborn. Easter is coming. Let Christ refresh you through His new life, and let wonder again be a part of your life.

Pastor Craig

Sin

Sin – It’s such a big word to have so few letters. It reminds us of so much unpleasantness. We recall the times we have been hurt, the times and ways others have wronged us. There are scars – emotional, psychological, financial, spiritual, and, sometimes, actual physical ones as well.



There are also those times we are reminded of that involve our wrongs committed against others. We would rather not remember them. It is so much more acceptable to be the wounded victim than the uncaring victimizer!


But sin has a third category as well. In fact it is this third category that swallows all the others. Sin is simply missing the mark. Think of it as being at a shooting range. The targets are 300 yards away. The mark is a circle smaller than a dime, in fact it is only the tiniest fraction of an inch larger than the circumference of the bullet. This is what God sets for you and for me. There is no second ring, only the perfect shot.


“How unfair,” you cry! And you proceed to draw other rings on the target. You draw a ring that includes all the good “church people” you know. You draw a ring outside of that one that includes all the “good people”, and another one that includes the “nice people”. Outside that there may be a circle that includes all those people who have never gotten arrested or charged with a crime. We draw lots of circles, each one getting bigger and, finally, including almost everyone we know and care about.


Now we feel much more comfortable aiming at the target. Of course, we had to increase the size of the target! It is now 50 yards high and 50 yards wide, much more comfortable to shoot at. We shoot, and our shot lands easily within the outer rings. In fact, we are only 3-4 rings from the center. Yes, we feel really good.


The problem is that God only recognizes that center ring. All of the others are standards we set up. The only mark that counts is that one in the center. In our attempts to perfect ourselves we go back to the same sin that Adam & Eve committed, the one that says if you don’t like the rules as they are, just make up ones with which you are more comfortable. Keep making the circles bigger until all our family and friends are on the inside with us.


Throw out anything you don’t like and call it enlightenment. The only problem with that is that you and I end up throwing out God’s grace as well. We disregard or disagree with anything that might make us fall on our knees and cry out, “Oh God! Have mercy on me, a sinner!” It is only when we recognize how lost we are without God’s mercy and how undeserving we are of the gift of that mercy, that we come to recognize how abundantly it has been given to us for free!

Pastor Craig

The Joy of Judgment

The reading from Daily Bread for today (March 23rd) included the verse from I Chronicles 16:33. Then the trees of the forest will sing, they will sing for joy before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth.
There are a great many things we associate with the word judgment. Joy is not usually one of them. Oh, anxiety, fear, shear stark terror, guilt, but joy? Really? Come on!

We remember those verses from the New Testament where it says the things we have done in the most secret ways and places shall be proclaimed from the housetops (Luke 8:17). We remember those things we wish could be kept secret into eternity. However, we forget that our God is a God of mercy and compassion, of patience and long-suffering. We many indeed have some embarrassing moments. I really haven’t been granted insight into exactly how all that will come to pass.

When we look at judgment from this point of view, we are concentrating on our guilt, our sins, our wrong doing. For just a moment, explore it differently with me. Imagine you are innocent. Imagine that the trial would yield a judgment of total and complete exoneration. Wouldn’t you want your day in court? Wouldn’t you want to be vindicated?

The judgment that is coming will silence your accuser. Your accuser is the one who challenges your standing before God, the one who says that Christ cannot forgive you, forgiveness may be for other people, but your sins are too great. Satan constantly tries to convince you that the promises of the Scriptures are not true, or at least, are not true for you.

Judgment is not a day to condemn or embarrass those who stand before Christ and proclaim Him Lord. No, the judgment is a day to finally silence the one who constantly challenges every positive thought you have ever had about yourself, discourages you from ministry, and says your sins outweigh the infinite grace of God. You can look forward to the day of judgment singing for joy because the grace of Jesus Christ has already proven your innocence. It is finally time to silence your accuser!


Pastor Craig

I Made You!

Past the seeker as he prayed came the crippled and the beggar and the beaten. And seeing them...he cried, "Great God, how is it that a loving creator can see such things and yet do nothing about them?"...God said, "I did do something. I made you."



Has your heart ever mourned for those struggling through this life apart from a knowledge of God’s love and mercy? Have you asked God to do something about poverty and injustice? Have you felt sorry for the homeless and hungry? Have you shed a tear for those who live in loneliness? Maybe God’s gift to them is not a home, food, friends, or money. Maybe, just maybe, God’s gift to them is you! Yes, you – with all your failings and brokenness – with all your flaws and sins – with everything that is wrong with you – maybe, just maybe, you are the angel God has sent to bless and keep them.


The fourth chapter of Esther contains these words, Who knows but that you have come to this position for just such a time as this? What an amazing thought! The people of Israel were in danger, REAL danger. There was a plan to exterminate each and every one of them. Who would have thought that a former slave girl could save them all. It seems impossible. And it would have been, except that the plan was God’s. God had put Esther in place as the queen. I t was a fearsome thing to stand before the most powerful ruler on the earth at that time and tell him he had messed up, that his foolish pride had allowed him to be deceived and sucked into an evil plot based on jealousy and prejudice.


Who knows that your lifetime of preparation may be for only a few moments when God uses you as His most mighty instrument. It doesn’t have to be a world changing work. It might not make the front page of the morning papers. It WILL change at least two people’s lives directly, the person God calls you to encounter – and your own as you see God work through you showing forth His mighty power to all who will watch.


Have you ever considered that the very reason you were created was to address some of those very problems that break your heart and God’s?


Pastor Craig



Giants in the Promised Land

When the Israelites arrived at the borders of the land of Canaan, the land God had promised them as their own, they did what any army would do. They sent out spies to see the strength of the people in the land of which they were about to take possession. The twelve spies carefully looked at all the different aspects of the land. When they came back to the waiting peoples they gave their report.


The report – there are giants in the land! Ten of the spies spread fear and dread among the people with their talk of the strengths and defenses of the people who currently held the land. The people mourned their children, whom they knew would be killed in the battle to come.

However, two of the spies had a different perspective of the land. If the Lord is pleased with us, then He will bring us into this land, and give it to us (Numbers 14:8). They didn’t deny the presence of the giants. They didn’t claim that the soldiers of the people of Israel were stronger than the people who already had possession of the land. They didn’t claim to have bigger giants than the Canaanites. They didn’t have more advanced weaponry. None of that mattered.

It didn’t matter who the opposition was as long they continued to try to please the Lord. Throughout your life, you have faced giants in your journey to your Promised Land. They were real. Giants of failed relationships, of destroyed financial futures, of lives gone off track and wrecked. Giants of substance abuse, of abandonment, of abuse, giants that are scary and too big for us to tackle. These things aren’t allegories or part of someone’s imagination. They are real, and they have happened to many of you.

The good news is that your Promised Land is as secured for you as the Israelites Promised Land was for them. God wants to show you his strength, not your own. God wants your trust to be in the fact that he is with you, that he is the one able to handle any situation, not you.

The interesting thing is that the Israelites did not go up and take the land at that time. They ended up wandering in the wilderness until all the adults of that doubtful generation had died out. You know who did take the land for the Israelites? Those children that they feared would perish in the battles to come!

The giants you face are just as real as the giants confronting the Israelites. Just remember, your Savior is just as real too.

Pastor Craig