Hammer on Anvil '

A friend of mine and I were talking early this morning about cloud formations as Hurricane Issac makes its way up here to the Midwest. We were both fascinated by how the system was still formed into a sort of circle, even as it begins to dissipate and play itself out. Then my friend said something I'd never thought about before. "They're predicting about 5 inches of rain from this storm-it's been dropping 5 inches of rain all along it's route. How does it pick up THAT much seawater, convert it to fresh, and dump it down on us? And why can't we figure out how to do that? If God can do it, why can't we?"

Most of us, in the course of our lives, will witness, hear about, or be involved in a heated religious discussion. As many different religions as there are (not counting the differing beliefs within the same religion), the odds are that passionate people are going to disagree. When I first became a Christian, my sister had a lot of questions for me-tough questions that I usually didn't have an answer for. Even today, I'm sure there are some of those questions I still don't have an answer for. 'Why does God let bad things happen to good people?' 'Why does the Bible teach inequality between the sexes?' 'How can the God who killed all those people in the Old Testament be the God of love?' 'How do you explain dinosaurs?'

The answer to these hard questions is not easy. Many times, the answer is, "I don't know". It is very easy to get frustrated in the face of these questions. For me, it's times like these that I think of the clouds. How could a big explosion have created the intricate weather patterns that are in storms? How could an accident have created exactly the right mix (made up of more variables than we can count) to sustain human life? How could evolution have played out so perfectly that it created entirely new, completely functioning species?

When asked one of the tough questions, my response is always the same: "I don't know all the answers-I am not God." What I do know is that God shows me something every single day to remind me of who He is, and how He is wholly different from me. If God can do it, why can't we? Because we're not Him.

What has God shown you about His character lately?

The Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry I have made them. Genesis 6:7

For God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16

Confused? Looking at these two passages, one from the Old Testament, the other from the New, it seems difficult to reconcile the very different images of God that are portrayed. How could a loving God who came to earth as a man, healed the sick, raised the dead, and died for us because of love be the same God who burned the sons of Aaron, made the Israelites wander 40 years in the desert, and placed them in captivity again and again?

We talk so much about God's love for us. We experience His love personally in our lives in the forms of peace and joy that transcend circumstances. As we grow to know Him more, our capacity to understand His love also grows. In reality, all this talk of God's love is very true: God did love the world so much that He sent Jesus to take our place and conquer the grave. He wants us to love Him in return and to desire to spend eternity with Him.

In the modern church, we spend a lot of time talking about God's love. And it's no wonder we do: so many people are wandering without a hope, dying for someone to love them and accept them regardless of what they've done. As Christians, it is our duty and privilege to offer this to them. Sometimes, though, I think we miss so much of God's character; to our ultimate detriment.

God is love. 1 Corinthians 13 gives us a perfect picture of that. But God is also just. He is righteous. He is holy--set apart. He is sovereign and He is Lord of our lives. God cannot abide sin. Like a High Judge, He must proclaim judgement on sin in our lives. 'Jesus sacrifice takes the punishment for our sins,' you say. This does not absolve us and make it okay to do whatever, whenever.

Any woman who has read Proverbs 31 knows how high God's expectations are. Any married person who has read Ephesians 5:22-30 knows that God's calling is beyond our capability. 'Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord." v22 "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself up for her." v25 God's standards are impossible to live up to by our own strength. Trying to live by these rules by ourselves only leads to sin. Which is why we need Him. After all, what is sin but failing to live inside a relationship with the Lord?

Culture has deceived us into believing we are the masters of our own destiny. It has bestowed rights upon us that are a complete illusion. "You're worth it." "You deserve a break today." The more we buy into this, the more selfish we become. As parents, we fail to do our best at raising our children because it gets in the way of our dreams. As spouses, we refuse to accept our God-given roles because they are "anti-equality". As Christians, we fail to look to Christ as our example because He had no possessions, no ambition to power and He didn't care what the affluent people thought of Him.

I read an article today chronicling the top 5 reasons why Jesus would be fired from a youth minister's position in church. Check out the article on page 11. The first and most important, according to the author's view, is that He would shrink the group before He would grow it. I agree very strongly with this. I believe that Christ would shrink His youth group because He would challenge the status quo. He would 'burn away the chaff', so to speak, of those whose hearts were not in it. He would push those committed few to new levels of devotion to God. He would anger some people by calling out their 'lukewarm' tendencies.

God has great things in store for us because of His love. Great things don't come easy, though. We have to accept His great expectations of us in order to capture His best plan for our lives.

We often like to think of God as more of a system than a being. We see that he did something for someone else and wonder why he hasn’t done the same thing for us. We follow the same steps as that other person, do all the same things, but we get different results. But God isn’t a system.

Systems are, by their nature, flawed. Ever heard the term “it slipped between the cracks”? That’s what happens with systems; they have flaws. And unfortunately, it is often real people who slip between the cracks. We see and read about these situations in the news all the time.

But God doesn’t work that way. God specially tailors everything specifically for us. Some might feel that this isn’t fair, but fair and equal are not the same thing. In fact, scripture makes it clear that God does not treat everyone equally. (Luke 14:7-11, Matthew 5:3-12, etc.)

Isn’t it better knowing that we don’t have a system that lets people slip between the cracks, but rather we have a God, a real, all-knowing, all-present, all-powerful, benevolent being looking out for us and treating each of us as a special case?