Where is God When We Cry

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? 

O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;

and by night, but find no rest. – Psalm 22:1-2 (NRSV)

Have you ever felt like crying out like this? What was going on in your life? How bad was it? Where was God when you made this cry? Did this cry ever pass?

The following story has been sent to me before, and I have since discovered that it is a Fred Craddock story.
Nettie and I got acquainted in Chautauqua, New York, with a minister who had no arms. He was born with nothing from here. No arms. He was telling us one day there at Chautauqua the experience of learning to put on his own clothes without any arms. He said his mother always dressed him, and he’d gotten to be a pretty big boy. She fed him, she dressed him, she fed him, she dressed him. One day she put his clothes in the middle of the floor and said, “Dress yourself.”
He said, “I can’t dress myself, I don’t have…”
She said, “You’ll have to dress yourself,” and she left the room.
He said, “I kicked, I screamed, I kicked, I screamed, I yelled, ‘You don’t love me anymore!’ Finally, I realized that, if I were to get any clothes on, I’d have to get my clothes on.” After hours of struggle, he got some clothes on. He said, “It was not until later that I knew my mother was in the next room crying.”
I don’t know if God distances God’s self from us, but I know sometimes we feel distant.

Maybe God seems far away because there are times that God wants to make sure we know we can do what seems impossible to us. God isn’t really far away at all, just waiting for us to figure out that we can do things we never knew we could. So we cry out in our anger and our pain until we cannot cry anymore. Then looking at whatever obstacle is in front of us we charge ahead. And that is the answered prayer. Not that God does it for us, but that God just lets us be long enough to figure out that we can do it for ourselves, that we are stronger than we ever knew, that we are capable of the impossible, and God knows what else. So let cry our cries and shout our shouts, sooner or later we may find out that God was there the whole time.

With hope and joy,
Garrett

When At The Gates of God

Enter his gates with thanksgiving,

and his courts with praise.

Give thanks to him, bless his name. – Psalm 100:4 (NRSV)

What are you thankful for today? Have you told God? Have you told anyone for that matter? Where have you found the gates of God? Where do you think God’s courts are? How have you blessed God’s name?

I once heard that each time you pick up the phone you should smile. When I asked why I was told, “Because the person on the other line will be able to hear your smile and you will make their day better.” Ever since I have heard that mighty peace of wisdom I have tried to follow it. Even if I am not making the person’s day better on the other end of the line, it makes my day a little better.
Mother Teresa once said, “Kind words can be short and very easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.” I suppose that is true. I remember the people who tell me very kind things and very mean things. Both stick with me. Sometimes I say very rude things before I think about it. It really is simple to say something rude, and we try to apologize later saying something like, “I am sorry about that, my emotions got the best of me.” But we know that doesn’t make it better, those awful words hang in the air. The people we hurt are hurt. Words cannot really be taken back, which is why it is good to say kind words. They linger in the air too, but instead of pain they bring joy.
I got a call today from a friend. She was obviously smiling when I answered the phone, I could hear it and suddenly I was smiling too. She was so full of joy it made me happier. She was so full of thanksgiving it made me more thankful. Then she said some kind words about me and my heart rejoiced. Now I am praising God too!

I hear a lot of people talk about how awful the world is these days. We have each complained bitterly about something. But each morning we wake up we enter the gates of God. God’s courts are all around us, and there is plenty for which to be thankful! We must make choices though. We can choose to answer the phone with a frown and bring no joy. We can choose to say rude words and only make it so people don’t want us anywhere near. Or we can choose to rejoice with thanksgiving because we are in the courts of God, we are saved in the name of Jesus, we are God’s little loves. The choice is ours each moment. How will you enter the gates of God today?

With hope and joy,
Garrett

Drawing Near to God

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. – James 4:8a (NRSV)

How to you draw near to God? When was the last time that you tried? Did you discover God drawing near to you? How is your relationship with God? Could it be better? How will you make it better?

Sometime ago someone sent me this.
Listen
When I ask you to listen to me and you start giving me advice, you have not done what I asked.
When I ask you to listen to me and you begin to tell me that I shouldn't feel that way, you are trampling on my feelings.
When I ask you to listen to me and you feel you have to do something to solve my problem, you have failed me, strange as that may seem.
Listen! All that I asked was that you listen--not talk or do--just hear me.
Advice is cheep. Thirty-five cents will get you both Dear Abby and Billy Graham in the same newspaper.
All I can do is do for myself. I am not helpless--maybe discouraged, but not helpless.
When you do something for me that I can and need to do for myself, you contribute to my fear and inadequacy.
So, please listen and just hear me. If you want to talk, wait a minute for your turn--and I'll listen to you.

We know that those who listen to us are truly our friends, because they are not trying to offer us quick fixes, but instead are just trying to be with us when there are no quick fixes. God wants to be a friend, someone we can talk to and be heard, someone who isn’t going to interrupt us or offer us cheep advise before we are done with our stories, someone who holds us when we cry to let us know we are not alone. God wants us to get everything out so we felt heard, and it is then that God will talk to us. And if God is our friend then we will sit back and listen, and who knows what glorious things we will hear!

With hope and joy,
Garrett

Minister's Minute from June Issue of the Journal of Hope and Joy

Here I am late at night, sitting in front of my computer feeling like an author dealing with a deadline. That happens sometimes with these “Minister’s Minutes.” The newsletter is ready to go out and all that is still needed is my part, and for the life of me I can’t think of anything. Melinda has gone to bed, but before she left me to my task she listened to me briefly complain about not having anything to write. I am both blessed and cursed with a wife who is often wiser than me. She looked at me without any pity (which is all I wanted) and said, “Why don’t you write about how we all want to be better people? Say something about how it is hard, and how we need to keep trying in the moment we have as opposed to thinking too far into the future.” Then she smiled, gave me a kiss and left.
I have no idea how to prove we all want to be better people, because there have been times each of us felt like we were fine the way we were. I have no idea if I can prove, or should even attempt to prove that we each want to be a better person, but I hope it is true. I hope that each of us can look deep inside ourselves and realize no matter how well we are put together that we can be better. I hope that the people we are now are not the people we will always be. I hope my faults, the small ones and the big ones, won’t always be. If grace is what grace is and work is what work is surely together grace and work can make me become a better person to myself, my friends, my family, and most assuredly my God.
Those who are Christians find inspiration to become better from the person of Jesus. In his humanity we see our lack of humanity, and there is something about his humanity that beckons us, that calls us to throw away our brokenness and lean forward into wholeness. Often the example of Jesus is too much though. We think to ourselves, “I am no Jesus, I am not even close and I never will be.” And so we leave it at that, no better than we were before because the goal seems so far away.
Of course should we lose hope when examining Jesus’ example we are poor students of scripture. It appears that God calls those who must become better. No one started off where they ended up. Many were called by God and said, “God you have the wrong person I can’t do this, I’m not good enough.” And it is as though God said, “You’re not good enough yet, but I’m not done with you.” Read some scripture if you don’t believe me. Read about Abraham and Sarah, read about Jacob and Moses, read about Sampson and David, read about Elijah and Jeremiah, read about a group of disciples who never seem to get it, and a man named Paul who once wrote, “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” but also had the wherewithal and faith to write right after that, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Why was Paul given hope that his wretchedness wasn’t the end of him when dealing with God? I am sure there were many reasons, but one from that old Sunday school song must have been at the forefront of his mind, “Jesus loves me this I know.”
The thing about being loved is that it makes us want to become better people. Maybe it has something to do with the people who love us, as though we want to become the person they think we can be. Melinda is right though, this is process and not some future we can just jump into. Each day we can become a little better when we let love guide us. I know this is true because I watch my wife. A couple of days ago I was trying to get Langston to say some words. Eventually I tried to get him to say “love.” “Langston, say ‘love,’” I said. He said, “Mommy,” and Melinda overheard him. When she went to bed tonight kissing me before she left, she went to sleep in his room since she knows she will miss him when she goes out of town to see a friend. For my little boy mommy is love, and therefore his mommy wants to become the best mommy she can be one day at a time. If we asked Jesus to say “love” I wonder if he might just say our name. Hmm, that makes me want to become the best me I can be one day at a time.

Riding the Wave of the Holy Spirit,
Garrett

Why We Live

Jesus said, "The first in importance is, 'Listen, Israel: The Lord your God is one; so love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.' And here is the second: 'Love others as well as you love yourself.' There is no other commandment that ranks with these." – Mark 12:29-31 (The Message)

What does it mean to live this way? Have you ever tried to live this way? How do you think the world may seem if you lived this way? Have you met anyone who tried to live life this way? What was that person like?

I was sent this sometime ago:
When Jewish psychiatrist Victor Frankl was arrested by the Nazis in World War II, he was stripped of everything—property, family, possessions. He had spent years researching and writing a book on the importance of finding meaning in life—concepts that later would be known as logotherapy. When he arrived in Auschwitz, the infamous death camp, even his manuscript, which he had hidden in the lining of his coat, was taken away.
“I had to undergo and overcome the loss of my spiritual child, “ Frankl wrote. “Now it seemed as if nothing and no one would survive me; neither a physical nor a spiritual child of my own! I found myself confronted with the question of whether under such circumstances my life was ultimately void of any meaning.”
He was still wrestling with that question a few days later when the Nazis forced the prisoners to give up their clothes.
“I had to surrender my clothes and he in turn inherited the worn-out rags of an inmate who had been sent to the gas chamber,” said Frankl. “Instead of the many pages of my manuscript, I found in the pocket of the newly acquired coat a single page torn out of a Hebrew prayer book, which contained the main Jewish prayer, SHEMA YISRAEL (Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one God. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.)
“How should I have interpreted such a ‘coincidence’ other than as a challenge to LIVE my thoughts instead of merely putting them on paper?”
Later, as Frankl reflected on his ordeal, he wrote in his book MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING, ‘There is nothing in the world that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions, as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life…He who has a WHY to live for can bear almost any HOW.’”

Our meaning is discovered in love, and if we are filled with love for God and others maybe we can bear almost anything. During my many times in hospital rooms experiencing unspeakable suffering those who love God always seem to be able to bear what others cannot take. There is suffering in life, but with love burning within us we just might be able to take it all in stride because we know that we live to love!

With hope and joy,
Garrett