new week starts

Last week I did not talk about sermons. It was time for a break. I started out by speaking to the impressions, parts of sermons that I remembered vividly because they excited me. It evolved into practically reviewing sermons. To do that I ended up using my notes. That got stale to me. I needed blog material and it got too easy. I am glad that last week Genesis spoke to me. Genesis is great for that.

So last Sunday, what impressions did I come away with?

The evening sermon is always easier. It was last. It was fresher. It was shorter having less points. My impression of Sunday night was that RC rambled big time. There were a lot of impressive sentences but often they seemed disjointed. He tried to cover a lot of things in 15 minutes.

He was supposed to speak on line in the Apostles Creed something like: "He was born of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit." RC mentioned that that meant Jesus was born perfect, without sin. But he mostly spoke of the Parable of the Good Samaritan. He touched on the interesting idea that this was not about doing good and making a rule out of it. It was more about the poor beaten man lying helpless in the road. We are like him, we need a savior. We cannot help ourselves. We are passive participants in our salvation. But after we are saved, fixed up if you will, then we must be active participants. That was interesting.

In the morning MP spoke on 1 Samuel 15. David prays for the baby of Bathsheba (whose name is never mentioned). When it dies he gets up, cleans himself off, and eats normally. Did MP get the scripture, if not the inspiration, from my blog? I covered this recently. I wonder because before he got up to start he looked over at me and gave me a short smile. Was there intent there? I really only thought of this because I wondered why he smiled at me. It could have been other reasons or it could be simply that I was looking back at the congregation and I caught his eye. He does not usually smile at me. Hmmmm.

Well if it is so he just too the chapter. His sermon had no resemblance to my blog post. He used this chapter to talk about the recent death of MH. Our church had corporately prayed for his healing. But he lost him fight to beat cancer. God chose to say no. He was listening but God chose to take him.

MP is concerned that we not lose faith in healing. It is proper to have a time of mourning. But then you clean up, get something to eat and go on.

My final comment is that it is things like this that got the church, some anyway, to decide that the healing gift was temporary, for the age of the apostles and Jesus. It all went away when the apostles died.

I just do not believe that to be true. But some people decided to judge God for saying "no" in an important case where some beloved man or woman, a Godly leader, died young after a long illness. That is what I think happened.

It can be very hard to deal with the questions that come after someone tragically dies or is left, like Joni Earackson Tada a quadriplegic for life. She was beautiful righteous young girl who had her whole life ahead of her. By claiming healing no longer happens people can reduce the confusion, ease the tension between knowing God is loving and seeing such tragedies and being helpless to do anything.

God has his reasons for taking MH. His logic is not ours. All of us must die. It is tragic that some do not get to live long lives and see their grandchildren. (It is also tragic that some people no worse that I do not find a spouse and have the family that they so much want.)

The psalms are full of laments. People question God, get mad at God, but finally decide that God is good. I think often they are rehearing with their words something they do not feel at the moment. They are encouraging their hearts and souls. Despite it all we know God is good even thought we do not understand it all.