Category Archives: Religious Musings

A Lesson in Trust

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My dad sometimes tells a story of a time when I was younger. We were at my uncle’s auto shop and there was a gate standing in the yard. It wasn’t attached to anything, it was heavy, made of metal and able to stand on its own. My dad was on one side while I was on the other side playing.

Dad saw the gate start to tilt towards me and the only thing he could do was yell at me to run! He said that I followed his command to run just in time since moments later the gate fell. I came out unscathed because I heard my father’s command and executed it, because I trusted him without doubt.

When I was a little older, I was waiting on a bus to take me home from school. As I stood at the corner I felt the need to move away from where I was standing (near the edge of the sidewalk) to a place closer to the buildings. Just as I moved my position, a truck carrying glass bottles came around the corner and one of the cases with the glass bottles fell off, breaking and flying all over the area that I vacated just seconds ago.

Sometimes I wonder about myself now. Would I have reacted the same way? When I ask God, “Why?” am I asking because I want to know, or because I can’t trust? I wonder if my want to know everything is due to the fact that I don’t fully believe Romans 8:28?

Thoughts to ponder.

~ * ~

On that Saturday …

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I went to a Good Friday service that was a little different from ones I’ve been to before. The sanctuary was dark, except for the flickering of candles in the front and around the floor. They read scripture and sang songs about Jesus’ final hours on earth. Participation wasn’t in the doing, but in the observation – in the experience. It was a somber affair. I was sad.

I have been sad all week. There was a heaviness weighing on my heart and I couldn’t seem to shake it. As I sat in the service I lifted it up, but over and over again I was reminded of the fact that what I was going through, the sadness, the heartbrokenness, Christ went through it a million times more. The more I thought of it the more I started to picture and wonder about those last hours.

How deep was the rejection, when God turned his back away? It sliced through my heart; any rejection I feel or have felt, will never compare to the rejection that Jesus felt that afternoon when God could no longer look at him, when the father turned his face away from his son. Sitting there I imagined the pain, he must have felt as he experienced, for the first time, what we have to live with because of sin. The agony that he felt, I cannot express.

I thought about the disciples, the people who followed Jesus. How did they feel? How did they feel to see the person whom they believed to be God, whom they believed will bring the kingdom of God to earth, how did they feel to see him crucified? Maybe some of them felt disappointed. Maybe some of them felt like they were betrayed, like the wool was pulled over their eyes. Perhaps some felt like the rug was yanked out from under their feet and they were free-falling into an abyss of uncertainty.

Then what happened when they laid him in the tomb? What emotions were they experiencing when they spent that entire Saturday wondering if they would be next. Wondering if people would accuse them and crucify them. Did they question? Did they shed tears? Did they talk about what it was like when he was alive?

A heaviness must have filled them, a coldness that permeated from their heart and flowed through their veins, filling their body with dread.

In light of all these things I felt small. THIS is how it feels to be disconnected, to be separated from the one you love, the one you trust, the one you felt like you knew inside and out. I was overwhelmed.

I think it’s important to remember this feeling; the feeling of loss and despair – of hopelessness. I think it’s important because it makes what happens next even more extraordinary…

~ * ~

Are you there, God?

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Today’s post is a little later than usual. It’s been a long week so, I took a nap around 2pm and got up at 8. I would have turned around and gone back to sleep, but in my head I heard, “you have to do BEDA” so, I dragged myself out of bed to write this. BEDA motivate!

I read this book a while ago, Disappointment with God by Philip Yancey, it’s very thought provoking and it leads to questions like, “Where is God when bad things happen?”

I read this book about 4 years after I moved to the United States, and now, 9 years later, something connected in my head. That something was about the night we moved here and how I could have been disappointed, or taken it as a bad “omen”, and why I didn’t.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that God doesn’t leave us unprepared. Before we left Guyana we were cleaning out the bookcases and I found this old book, Will the Real Phony Please Stand Up? by Ethel Barrett, I don’t remember what grabbed my attention, maybe it was the name, but I decided to read that book on our flight.

The book touched on the life of Job and one of the things that stood out for me was Job, crying out to God, wanting to know why he had fallen so low. His children were dead, he was poor, his friends had forsaken him, his wife told him to curse God and die and his health was affected. Job didn’t have a clue as to why these things happened, yet he still trusted and believed in God. When God replied to Job, he didn’t tell him why he did what he did, he didn’t clue Job in, saying, “Well done, Job!” and though Job was healed and restored, he was never aware of why the bad thing happened in the first place.

I say that God doesn’t leave us unprepared because, that night, we lost the majority of our money and all of our records, the only exception being our passports. It happened at the airport, when we were meeting our family, when we were celebrating our reunion. We were robbed, it was quick, and they took the most important things. My siblings won’t remember, they were very young, 5 and 7 year olds, but I remember. I remember this event with a clarity that I rarely experience when remembering the past. I remember my emotions and I remember that, upon realizing what happened, the first thing that popped into my mind was, “remember Job”.

I could have felt a negative reaction to the entire thing, “How could you God? Where are you? Are you even listening to me?” or, I could have gone the path that comes easier to me, the apathetic path, “Well, obviously God doesn’t take care about his people, so who cares about him?”. However, I found myself taking a different and unexpected path, “Since I am not privy to your ways, God, I’m going to let this play out and trust that you have it all under control. That you will take care of your people.”

I cannot tell you how I would have reacted if I hadn’t read that book, I feel like it prepared me to face that experience and many more after that. The fact is, bad things happen all the time, to all kinds of people; we live in a fallen world and just because I’m a follower of Christ doesn’t give me a pass to a trouble-free life. The thing that determines my faith is how I react when bad things happen. After that experience, whenever the question comes to mind, “Where are you God? Are you there God?” I always hear him say, “I’m right here. Trust me.”

What an awesome God we serve

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Awe: (n.) Dread; great fear mingled with respect. [Websters]

The word awesome has lost its meaning. Today, anything is awesome. Anything that we think is wonderful is awesome. Simple things that give us pleasure is awesome. It wasn’t until someone pointed it out that I realized that we have lost sense of what awesome really means.

Whilst thinking about how awesome God is, I saw an image in my head of a magnificent building, or making grilled cheese sandwich in a toaster, because those things – in my vocabulary – were awesome. But, this isn’t what awesome means, and when I’m talking about God being awesome, I’m not trying to relate Him to a sandwich. So, I’ve decided to reclaim the definition of awe.

To be in awe – to find something awesome – is to be in a state of reverence, respect and fear. When I think of an awesome God, I think of the one who said “Let there be!” and there was. I see in my mind the three Hebrew boys in the fiery furnace, walking around with a fourth who looks like the Son of God. I see Saul knocked off his horse on the road to Damascus. When I think of awesome, I see the throne with the four creatures around it singing, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.” and I see the twenty-four elders, bowing before him, casting down their crowns singing, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.”

When I think of awesome, I think about the God who put away all the splendors of heaven and became like the ones He created. When I think of awesome, I think about the knee-buckling, tear-jerking, dumbstruck feeling I get when I realized that this same God, loves me so much that he would give his life for me and that is infinitely greater than grilled cheese. When I think of His awesome power, I know that, “at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,to the glory of God the Father.” When I think about these things, I stand in awe.

O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is your name in all the earth.

On Saying Grace

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I’m on vacation!!! So, while I’m away, I’m going to be posting some things that I wrote in the past. This one isn’t from me, but from the patriarch of our family who recently passed away. He shared this with us a few years ago and I wanted to share it again.

Shalom Mishpochah…

When I was working with the Immigration Service, I was often amazed to hear the reasons and excuses presented by applicants on why they should be naturalized as citizens of this great country. I would say that maybe 90% had no idea that this nation was founded on Judeo-Christian principles. In my office, I had a painting of Normal Rockwell showing a woman and her son in a restaurant praying – Saying Grace, and occasionally, I would glance up as if to remind them to look and ask a question or two, but like I said many did not.

I, too have gotten in the habit of Saying Grace before I eat a meal, regardless if it is at home, on the road or in a restaurant. I have checked and could not find anywhere in the Bible where I am instructed to pray before I eat.  However, in Deut. 8:10, we read that we are to eat and then pray –“and you shall eat, be satisfied, and bless the Lord your God.” 

Nowhere do we find an instruction to bless the Lord before we are satisfied, let alone before the first bite.  Yet that is exactly what so many of us quite appropriately do.

You see, the Bible never asks us to do the easy and the natural. In fact the Bible made the western civilization possible by introducing this revolutionary idea.  It is not only possible, but vital to overcome nature, particularly our own. 

When we potty train a toddler we make important progress in the quest to teach a young human that doing what is right is better than doing what comes naturally.  When a young person makes the holy commitment to remain chaste until marriage, he or she is doing what is right rather than what is natural.  When a man shows up for work every single day – on time—he is doing what is right rather than what is natural.  Soon after we are born, our parents direct us toward doing what is right.  For the rest of our lives, our goal should be to elevate ourselves above the natural.

Since hunger induces spiritual awareness, most sensitive humans feel the need to say a blessing before satisfying hunger.  Thus, we can be counted on to do so without instruction.  This, is in fact what both Christian and Jews do.  But it is unnatural for the satiated diner with bulging belly to pause prior to staggering away from the table, in order to express profound gratitude to the Creator.  That is precisely why God demands it of us, through His words in Deuteronomy.  It may not be the easiest thing, but we should strive to be good rather than to be natural, and to teach our children to make the same analyses. 

Shabbath Shalom everyone…