Day of Praise

Tues, 08/30/16, "Day of Praise"

"The righteous perish, and no one takes it to heart; the devout are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil." - Isaiah 57:1

Years ago, Rabbi Harold S. Kushner wrote a book called "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" (1981). His conclusion was that God is indeed all compassionate but that God is not all powerful.

Rabbi Kushner and the God of the Hebrew Bible do not agree. Sorry, Rabbi.

Elie Wiesel, recounting his concentration camp experience as a boy in the book "Night," tells of the Jewish prisoners being marched past a young boy who had been hung by the Nazis. Someone cried out "[Where is your God now?] Where is He?", and someone responded "Here He is--He is hanging here on this gallows." (Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 4)

"He is hanging from this gallows" can mean "God is dead" or "God is right there with the young boy."

"God is dead" was Friedrich Nietzsche's teaching.

"God is right there with the young boy" is what we as Christian followers of Jesus believe and teach.

Ultimately, today's verse from Isaiah 57:1, "The righteous perish, and no one takes it to heart," raises questions. Does anyone, in any generation, care if a boy is hanging from a gallows? Does anyone today care that Christians, especially Christian leaders, are persecuted in countries where Christians are a minority...and sometimes in countries where Christians are supposedly the majority.

"Does anyone take this to heart?", God says through Isaiah. "Does anyone have time to think about why these things happen?"

God does.

God takes these things to heart.

God makes time to think about why these things happen.

It's probably, therefore, a good thing for us to do the same.

Namely, care, take these things to heart, think about why these things happen.

In Jesus, God does something about it.

When Jesus is in us, we do too.

Think about it.

Praise God!


Pastor Chris
"The gospel is the story of Jesus [what God's only Son has done for us that we can't do for ourselves], spoken as a promise." - Robert Jenson