Two months since my last blog, but there's been a reason.

The week after my last blog was Easter.  My Easter sermon was a disaster.  The church was full. There were lots of visitors. But my sermon started with a joke that insulted, apparently, everyone.  The sermon lasted five (count 'em, 5) minutes past high noon, and people did not get out to go eat Easter dinner on time; I don't know if anyone's roast burnt, but by that night I got a smoking email blasting me for all of it.  I was devastated.  I replied with Proverbs 27:6 "Faithful are the wounds of a friend, But deceitful are the kisses of an enemy." And I meant it, and still mean it.

The emailer wanted me to go to the head of every family in attendance to apologize for offending them, so I did so; and I informed my emailer of my progress contacting everyone by mail or in person.  After I was 90% done, the emailer wrote to say that the original email was an over-reaction, and the writer was sorry.

Except that everyone I talked to said that they were not offended, but were concerned that others might have been.  When I was done making apologies, I asked for a months sabbatical from the church, and it was granted. 

That week my sister died, and I had to go to Oregon for her funeral; she had fought MS for 25 years.  The day I got back I had to go to another funeral, a cowoker's mother had passed away, old age won out. The next week we made a trip to D.C. for a conference, and we wore ourselves out there. Last week a friend we met in Japan died with cancer, it began with breast cancer, but spread throughout her body.  Two weeks ago, Bloodtypo faced a life threatening situation with calmness and aplomb. Every week it has been something, not always that bad.  Next week SonnetJoy and Pendragon leave for Honduras for a year teaching in a Christian school (see her xanga); and Cornsilk moves back home.

God is faithful, I will endure, and God will bless in spite of me (not because of me).  In the mean time, think of my family when you say your prayers.

My Bride decided to decorate her new office to suit herself.  One of the things she wanted to do was to make it personal, and not just something that any one could do by going to Wallyworld.  So she (we) did some research and came up with several meaningful things she could put up.  This is one of them.  The title of the project is "Pray for a Cure."

At the bottom left, and the ribbon hangers at the top, are the ribbon for Autism (our daughter, Cornsilk), the Alzheimer's symbol (my Mom), and the Parkinson's symbol (both our Dads).

We also have friends that have survived, or are now in treatment for, breast cancer; thus the pink ribbon at the top left.

The black ribbon at the top center is for gunshot victims; we recently lost a very dear friend that way (you can read my previous posts).

Can you identify the purple, red, and orange ribbons by their cause?

Of course, the title makes a basic assumption that you believe in prayer, that there is Someone that answers prayer, and that that Someone both can and will do so.

Are you a Christian?

My Bride is making a wall hanging for her new office which includes the ribbons for the various diseases, conditions, and syndromes which have afflicted various members of our family.  Our daughter, Cornsilk, had mild infantile autism, but she is now a fully functioning adult.

Anyway, the ribbon for autism she sewed onto the hanging came from this link: Autism Ribbon.  The download was free, and the resulting embroidery ribbon was more than satisfactory, with the puzzle pieces visible and the colors bright and beautiful.  You need an embroidery sewing machine, the file is in the "pez" format.

Reading an excerpt from her book, "A Lifetime of Wisdom":

For some odd reason, it comforted me to realize that God did not condemn me for plying Him with questions. He wanted me to express the true contents of my heart, to dump out all the jumbled, jagged shards of my soul before Him.

Sometimes we're afraid to talk to God this way — like Job crying out in the night on the ash heap behind his house, like the psalmist treading water in the dark, like a furious teenager welded into bed with a broken neck and bolts in her head. We repress those murky, edgy emotions about our suffering. We choose to be polite, speaking sanitized words, or not speaking at all. We bottle up our troubling questions and unspeakable feelings toward God, hiding behind an orthodox, evangelical glaze as we "give it all over to the Lord." Except that we don't. It's a lie and a ruse. And He knows that too.

Why would God rather have our anger, our venom, our rage, our cry of desolation rather than our measured, controlled, even-tempered, theologically correct prayer? It's all about the heart. Over and over again in Scripture you can hear God saying, "Give Me your heart or nothing at all." God doesn't have time to play games. He wants reality.

"God doesn't have time to play games."  Joni has done some amazing things in her life and I am sure she is a great inspirational speaker, but ...  and this is nitpicking, and I'm sure she probably meant it as a colloquialism, but ...

God is not subject to time, he has all the time the is, or ever could be, because He created all things, and that includes time.  God is not subject to time.  That is why He can hear all our prayers and act on them, "in the fullness of time" (Gal 4:4 and Eph 1:10).

I have this theory about death and time.  I have not found a proof text for it in the Bible, and this is certainly not developed in Scripture, but ... here is my idea: When we die, we immediately stand before God in Judgment.  We all stand before God's Judgment, time is no more, and we are all there on Judgment Day.  We all arrive before God at the "same time," eternity will have begun.  My Dad won't have to wait for me at the Eastern Gate to Heaven, because we will all stand before God on Judgment Day.  There are eschatological and ontological implications that I have not worked out yet, but that's my idea.

Anyway, God HAS the time for "all our anger, our venom, our rage, our cry of desolation" exactly because He is God.

Ok, so I almost never remember my dreams when I wake up.  The ones I do remember are normally abnormally bad dreams.  Well, this morning I woke up at about 2:30 AM with a really vivid dream.  Heart pounding, and breathing hard, I sat up in bed next to tears because of the dream.

I dreamed that I had taken some beautiful pictures of a wonderful landscape, and a lady I did not (and still don’t) recognize came up to me and declared that I had gotten her in my pictures, and that her image was syndicated so I would have to either pay her for her image or delete the pictures.  I showed her the landscapes and declared that there was no one in them.  She did not believe me and got angry, saying that I had hidden the pictures in the camera.  Well, I got angry back, and said some really bad things about her image and how her ‘face’ was suffering because of the bad image she was projecting at the time (gotta be the Japanese influence of 'face').

Immediately, the Holy Spirit convicted me of my rudeness, and how I was not showing the Imago Dei well, and how that hurt God.  I was to apologize for my rudeness and repent at once and without delay.

So I went and found the woman I had been rude to, and I confessed my rudeness, and repented, asking her for forgiveness.  She was rude again and would not forgive me.  I asked again for forgiveness, but still no forgiveness.  At this point I broke into tears (in my dream).  Again the Holy Spirit spoke to me, saying that even if she would not forgive me, the important thing was God forgave me because I was obedient and repentant toward him.  God forgave me, even though the rude lady never did.  I felt gratitude for the gift of confession and repentance that allowed my relationship to God to be restored.

I never discovered who the lady was; I woke up first, heart pounding and next to tears in gratitude.

Really what this is really asking is is murder as bad as a white lie? 

Some times I think that we don't want to judge: "Do not judge so that you will not be judged," Matthew 7:1 (NASB); so the tendency is to pass off sin as sin, and not to make a big deal about any sin.  I think this is also because we don't want others judging us too harshly, according to our own sins.

The problem with this approach is that it tends to minimize sin, to make it less serious than it is.  Christians need to take sin as seriously as God does.

Psalm 97:10 (NASB)
¹⁰ Hate evil, you who love the LORD, Who preserves the souls of His godly ones; He delivers them from the hand of the wicked.

Proverbs 8:13 (NASB)
¹³ "The fear of the LORD is to hate evil; Pride and arrogance and the evil way And the perverted mouth, I hate.

Amos 5:15 (NASB)
¹⁵ Hate evil, love good, And establish justice in the gate! Perhaps the LORD God of hosts May be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.

Logic tells us that some offences are worse than others.  When you stub your toe, would you rather just bruise it or would you rather it be broken?

Then we always need to consider what Scripture says, and the way that it says it: when King David wrote Psalm 51 he used three words for "sin."

Psalm 51:1-2 (NASB)
¹ Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; According to the greatness of Your compassion blot out my transgressions.
² Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity And cleanse me from my sin.

"Transgression" means to cross over a line, possibly unintentionally or on purpose.  A clear line had been drawn, and the offender has crossed that line.

"Iniquity" indicates something that should be straight is instead crooked.

"Sin" happens when the person misses the target.

David went on to call what he had done "evil."  David did not gloss over it and call it something else "a mistake," "a moral slipup," he did not try to excuse it as something normal in human experience.  Sin is entirely atheistic, repugnant, and rejected.

The evil of sin is in the fact that the primarily offended person is God.  Psalm 51:4 (NASB) "Against You, You only, I have sinned And done what is evil in Your sight, So that You are justified when You speak And blameless when You judge."

David's only sin was against God?  What about what he did to Bathsheba, and to her husband, Uriah the Hittite?  By comparison the offense against them was minor compared to the offense against God.  By just the same amount that God is greater than Uriah and Bathsheba, so David's sin against God is greater.

No all sins are not "the same."  There are atrocities, crimes against humanity, that are horrible to contemptible; we would not compare them as being in the same league as petty sins, yet they are all sins.  As sins, they are offenses against the infinitely good God, and deserve infinite punishment.

One more.

Romans 12:9 (NASB)
⁹ Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good.

http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/1664_Over_My_Dead_Body_Son/

The above link is one I definitely want you to read.  It comes from John Piper's blog, and it encourages Dads to educate their sons about something important.

There are some things more important than political correctness, there are some things worth taking a stand for (or against).  One of these is the difference between manhood and womanhood, manliness and feminity.  There are others, but this is a practical matter and we fathers need to make a stand on this for the protection of our daughters and the defense of our sons.

I have never before put a rating on a Xanga posting.  This time I used the "Caution" rating.  So, CAUTION, especially if you are currently grieving.  Otherwise, come grieve with me.

I think I may have hit Kübler-Ross’ fourth stage of grief: depression and sadness.

Denial and isolation may last moments or minutes, or days.  This time there was no chance of denial.  When each of my parents passed away, there were years and months, or weeks to see it coming, to prepare; but not this time. The loss was immediate, unexpected, and permanent. 

While I had flashes of anger around the event, it really was just an accident.  It was stupid, it was stupidly careless, stupidly reckless, and even stupidly stupid, but it was still an unintended accident.  He acted stupidly, she acted stupidly, if only … a thousand times, and if only … a thousand little things, any one of which would have changed everything and then none of this would have happened.

Since the loss was immediate and irreversible, there was no opportunity for bargaining with God about it.  My heart cried out “NO,” but that was disbelief.  I recognized this had indeed happened; it had the undeniable ring of truth to it as soon as I heard the words, and it was irreversible even as the first burst of tears came.  Sitting at their family table the next morning, the tears washed my face again unbidden and unwanted, but they came anyway.  And the friends I was there to comfort comforted me instead as they took turns hugging me as I wept uncontrollably.

Now sadness overcomes me whenever my guard is not up.  I feel distracted, and I am more forgetful than normal; I even locked myself out of my office today.  I can barely assemble a sermon to feed the flock God has given to my care, and preaching (my great joy) is harder than ever to do.  Whenever my mind is idle, it goes unbidden to this singular event. 

This was a young friend, not my Bride but “So I spoke to the people in the morning, and in the evening my wife died. And in the morning I did as I was commanded,” (Eze 24:18).  Even now the tears flow and I cannot do what God commanded Ezekiel to do: "Groan silently; make no mourning for the dead. Bind on your turban and put your shoes on your feet, and do not cover your moustache and do not eat the bread of men," (Eze 24:17).

Tonight I reverted back to isolation, as I felt the irrepressible need to sleep as soon as I got home, so I napped for two hours and I am going to bed again in a few minutes.  Asleep, at least I don’t have the wrenching of my gut muscles or the spasms in my neck and back.

Someday, but not today, I will come to acceptance.  Someday acceptance will come and I will not feel isolated, angry, or bargain with God, or be sad or depressed.  Maybe acceptance builds a little at a time between bouts with the other stages?  While I will never forget the young girl I baptized 15 years ago, and later the young and beautiful woman who last summer asked me to perform her wedding in November, someday I will be okay … even though this will never be okay. 

But Elisabeth Kübler-Ross missed the sixth stage of grief.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 ¹³ But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. ¹⁴ For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. ¹⁵ For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. ¹⁶ For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. ¹⁷ Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. ¹⁸ Therefore comfort one another with these words.

You see, Kübler-Ross did not know the final word on grief, acceptance is not the final stage of grief: comfort is the final stage, comfort in the hope and the anticipation of the soon return of Christ Jesus my Lord.  He will bring with Him those who have died before us, and we will all be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and we will be with the Lord always.  Kübler-Ross did not know this, but we do.

Pop culture has visions of a good after-life as joy with the people we have lost, and some gospel songs promote this idea.  But our meeting will not occur "just inside the eastern gate."  Scripture tells us that joy comes in the presence of the Lord.  

³ … I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, ⁴ and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away," (Rev 21:3-4).

Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus.  I have tears that need wiping away.

Today's blog by John Piper is excellent!

To understand why do evil, why you sin, this article is a great place to begin examining your life!

This may be too emotionally hard to read, so please skip this rant now and forgive me as an opinionated preacher who needs to process some personal pain.

When CornSilk was a child, she was diagnosed as having a condition that was then known as Mild Infantile Autism, now known as Autism Spectrum Disorder and other fancy names, the condition is still the same as it was.

When we told friends at church about her condition and what we knew about it at the time, we got the same replies as two of Job’s three friends.  First, a loving and well meaning Christian saint of God came to my Bride and me and said: “What sin did you commit that God would touch one of your children like that?”  Basically, this was also the medical model the doctors used for diagnosis: “Were you sick when you were pregnant?  What medicines and vitamins did you take during your pregnancy?  Were you abused during your pregnancy?  What unusual occurrences, or tramas, did you experience during your pregnancy?” 

Then second, another well meaning and sincere Christian friend said: “You must be really close to God for Him to entrust such a special child to your care.”  We wanted to say (but didn’t) that maybe next time we would be careful to keep our distance from God so our children would be safe.  

Job’s third friend said that the disasters that happened to Job were God’s inexorable will for his life.  Job was not responsible, and could not escape the events because they were his fate designed and designated for him by God.  We did not get that one when we were dealing with CornSilk’s disorder, but we heard it recently.

Recently a dear and young friend died a tragic death.  I don’t want to talk about that here, but I do want to comment about the various people’s reactions to her death.  

First, this was not God’s judgment on her or her husband for some imagined sin in their lives.  This was a godly couple, desperately in love with each other.  She was grounded in Scripture (and he is too), with a Godly worldview.  There was no known sin in her life; the possibility of secret sin can never be known 100%, but would be so entirely without evidence and so very out of character that the likelihood is in the range of 10^-15, that is to say, impossible.

Second, this was a disaster in the lives of her husband, her family and his family, and all the friends that loved her and still love him.  This was not a loving act of our good God.  Psalms 5:4 “For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness; No evil dwells with You.”  The death of one of His blessed children at the hand of the God of love (1 John 4:8 “The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”) is a horrible thought and an intolerable theological position, even if well intended by people who have not thought this through completely.

Third, the idea that God predestines some to present and eternal joy and others to present and eternal condemnation is contrary to logic and Scripture.  The form this was visited on the grieving family was that they should not grieve as those who have no hope (1 Thes. 4:13), because this was the will of the all powerful God whose will could never be resisted; therefore, we should not grieve and mourn because this was His will and plan for her life.  BUNK.  Even a family member said to me that “God needed another angel in Heaven, so he took her home early.”

The reason all three fail is that they do not take into account the Fall of Man, and the influence of Satan on the world, or God’s laws that he has set in place for the orderly operation of the cosmos.  God is not going to set aside the laws of physics every time one of His beloved children has put themselves in the way of, say, gravity; I don’t have much sympathy for bungee jumpers.  Occasionally God has performed miracles and set aside the normal order of things for his own glory, but these are so rare and unusual that we label them as “Miracles.”

The only answer I can offer is that there are things that we simply cannot comprehend, that are beyond knowledge and understanding, at least in this life.  Please pardon me now as I go and weep for a while for my friend and for her family and friends.