The Rev Blogcast: Where is God?
Episode 6
https://anchor.fm/danielmrose/episodes/eaf40c
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Where Is God?
In the dark we just need a glimmer of light…
Photo by Jordan Whitfield on Unsplash
I rolled over and opened my eyes. It was dark. The darkness seemed to drip from the ceiling. My body ached and my head was pounding. The gentle sound of my wife’s breathing was the only comfort in that moment. As I lay there the anger raged inside me as I thought again of my friend dying, as I sat next to him praying for a miracle.
Staring at the imperceptible ceiling listening to her breathe in and out, listening to the fan occasionally creak, his face flooded my mind. The smile. The coy eyebrow raise when he knew he got you. The excitement of some new trinket in the man cave. There was a joy and a glimmer in his eye that always drew me in. He was a man. He laughed like a man. He cared like a man.
She continued to breathe quietly. The fan continued to...
Screaming At God
Some days, that’s all you got.
I have been spending quite a bit of time in the Psalms. More and more of that time is spent in Eugene Peterson’s, The Message. He gives words to my soul. Today it is Psalm 77 and it’s all I got.
I yell out to my God,
I yell with all my might,
I yell at the top of my lungs.
He listens.
I found myself in trouble
and went looking for my Lord;
my life was an open wound that wouldn’t heal.
When friends said,
“Everything will turn out all right,”
I didn’t believe a word they said.
I remember God — and shake my head.
I bow my head — then wring my hands.
I’m awake all night — not a wink of sleep;
I can’t even say what’s bothering me.
I go over the days one by one,
I ponder the years gone by.
I strum my lute all through the night,
wondering how to get my life together.
Will the Lord walk off and leave us for good?
Will he never smile again?
Is his love worn...
This All Sucks!
Every once in a while you come face to face with a brokenness that overwhelms you. It seems that lately this has been the case more than not. I look around and people are not being healed, they are losing jobs, they are experiencing death.
This all sucks.
I know, I know, I’m a pastor and my Mimi would be mad that I just used the “s-word.” But, you know what, it does suck.
That’s the truth of the matter.
The brokenness of this world is overwhelming at times. I am so mad and frustrated with it. I wish God would simply do what I want him to do. When I pray for him to heal someone, I want him to do that. When I ask him to save a marriage, I want him to do that. Every once in a while, I want him to supersede the secondary causes of human sin, frailty, and brokenness to make this world how I want it.
He’s...
God Who?
*NOTE: This is the first in a series on the Evangelical Presbyterian Church’s, The Essentials of our Faith. Scriptural proofs can be found elsewhere. These posts will focus on the “why” and the impact of these statements in our lives.
The culture of the Bible was one of great diversity. Pluralism was the norm. In many ways biblical culture reflects our own. There were beliefs in many different gods and there were as many religions as there were clans. The book of Genesis starts with the words, “In the beginning God created…” When Moses penned these words he was doing so to begin to identify and differentiate the God from the gods.
The first essential belief of the EPC (my denomination) says this, “We believe in one God, the sovereign Creator and Sustainer of all things, infinitely perfect and eternally existing in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To Him be all honor, glory and praise forever!”
Why begin with a statement...
Who’s the Big Guy Upstairs? or The God Question
This is the third post interacting with Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity. Please remember that I cannot reproduce the book in these posts. I will do my best to summarize without being overly simplistic or reductionistic. Each post will be two parts. The first will be a summary of McLaren’s discussion and the second will be my reflections.The God question: Is God violent? God is a tribalistic, violent, cosmic child abuser. Do you believe that? This is the question that McLaren undertakes in the third part of A New Kind of Christianity. He says that as you read the Bible we bump into God doing or at least sanctioning genocide and violence. This seems to contradict the picture that we find in the life and person of Jesus. This leads to the natural question, “how can this be?”Beginning with this question, McLaren, begins to apply to theological questions his understanding of the overarching storyline of the Bible and...