Just this past weekend before our 2012 Swaziland Trip team meeting, I was talking with a team mate about occasional reports of death of a child that attend the carepoints.  I learned of another tragic loss today.  Please mourn with us the loss of a rare father and his precious daughter in Swaziland.

This is Helen…

“Keep this family in your prayers and especially the baby who is in the hospital. Pray for the teachers and students who had to witness the loss of their friend. And pray for the staff here working to help within this situation.”

The topic for today’s installment:
A Perfect Creation, A Perfect Plan, A Good and Omnipotent God / A Messed Up World, Inequality, and Suffering

I’m going to keep this brief and to the point (I don’t feel quite myself today I guess).  Pascal had a lot to say about this and that probably frames a lot of my thinking on the topic.

The seeming contradiction presented here is often posed as a challenge to Christian theology, and even more often is a source of doubt and confusion for Christians.  But exactly the opposite should be true.  The story the Bible tells, and what it tells us to expect is precisely this:  God formed a perfect creation, and was in perfect harmony and communion with us.  Mankind chose to turn away, and that perfect creation and perfect connection to Him was destroyed.  Yet THAT is what we were created for.  So we are left with a yearning, a certainty that what we see arond us is not right.  We KNOW that we were created for something more than the mundane struggles around us.  We KNOW that our current state is broken and corrupt. 

That truly would be cause for doubt and confusion… EXCEPT, that His Word explains and predicts this perfectly.  If His Word told us everything should be smooth sailing, we’d know it was false.  If He told us there was no eternal hope or vision, and no reason to yearn for what was lost in our deepest being, it would ring untrue.  So this “conflict” serves only to strengthen my faith.  His story just makes too much sense not to be true when I feel what I feel and see what I see… that is, provided I look deeply enough to understand what He really told us rather than accepting the falsified versions presented by both many in the church and the superficial misunderstandings of those who do not truly know Him.

I’ll tackle the trickiest of my topics today:  Grace vs. Good Works.  But really, I don’t think this one should be tricky.  Our salvation, our “legal” status, God’s unconditional love for us.  It’s 100% GRACE.  Period.  End of Story.  The love and forgiveness behind that grace is so powerful it should drive us to our knees in tears of joy every time it crosses our minds.

It should also drive us to a love in return.  A love that requires a response.  A love that treasures the relationship with God.  A love that drives us to action to get close to Him by engaging ourselves fully in the things that matter to Him.  That’s where “good works” comes in.  Not out of obligation or an attempt to earn anything, but out of love for Him, knowing that His heart breaks for the little ones (and big ones) that He loves SO much that are suffering.  And that we can help.  How can we do anything other than respond by sacrificing our wants and desires for the desperate needs of those He loves so much… just as much as He loves us?

My general point: REAL truth, REAL motivation, REAL peace and comfort, and REAL actions that make a difference will never come from picking a side in an argument where scripture may seem in conflict with itself.  It comes from finding the synergy that exists in how the seemingly contradicting pieces of scripture fit together to illustrate God’s character and plan.
My specific point:  Grace is grace, and is by definition the free gift of a God who loves us more than we can imagine.  There must be no drive to serve others through condemnation.  But we must respond to the kind of love He offers by loving Him… which He defines as loving and caring for “the least of these” - those in the most need, the most outcast of society.  We must.  Or else we are doing nothing to return His love, and that is just heartbreaking.

There’s not really going to be any order to these posts, this one just happens to be on my mind today since I’ve been reading here:

2 Corinthians 12:9-10
But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

This is certainly one not to get too carried away with.  As always, there is great danger in taking scripture out of the context of where and why it was written.  And even more risk in taking it out of the context of who God is and the entirety of His Word.  But… it is something to take seriously and to try to put in the right place.

So, here… we’re told:  weakness = strength.  For me, this one is actually easy.  Easy because I’ve done some things that have taken me beyond what I can do.  To a place where I KNOW that I am insufficient.  And that’s precisely when I’ve seen God work in powerful ways.  And, after all… He is our strength, right?

So should we wallow in defeat in bad situations?  Of course not.  That is when I have absolute faith the He will show His strength on my behalf.  I don’t presume to know if that will mean immediate deliverance, or if that means He will personally carry me through a time of trial… or even if He will carry me home to be with Him through a time of trial.  In any of these cases, He is victorious, His strength has redeemed me in a miraculous way that is full of unimaginable grace.  I am content to rest in HIS strength - real strength - that is brought to fruition in my time of weakness and need.

Sorry, I know I’ve been unreliable in getting my thoughts written for a while… although, perhaps you’re actually all thankful about that and I don’t need to be sorry.  I’m busy with my day job, which is kind of a day-evening-weekend job right now - but I’ll get it going again.

I’ve been thinking recently about the concept of duality.  This was one of Blaise Pacal’s fundamental premises in understanding man, God, our relationship, and even his rationale for belief in God.  And I see it everywhere in the Bible and in the world around me.  Ok, I’ll be more clear.  Some examples that I’ll exand on in coming posts:

A perfect creation and God’s goodness / The current state of our world
Unearned grace / Good works
Promises in scripture / Reality of our world around us
Human nature: sinful and broken state / Core desire and longing for God
Our relationship with God: brokenness and humility / Joint heirs with Christ

I’ll probably think of more as I go.  Stay tuned…

So I have been grappling again, and not with Jim.  He knows that every time he asks me if I want him to show me something new from class the answer is, “NO!”.  When God starts working on me though with a question I have to wrestle through, there is really no point in pretending anymore that the answer can be anything, but “Yes.”.  So yes, I will work this one through, and probably come up with more questions than answers. 

I have been reading some blogs advocating for the special needs children in Eastern Europe who, if not adopted, are transferred to an adult mental institution around the age of 5.  This is not a transfer that involves a sunny family style ward where the children are educated and loved, but rather a dark horrible place where their life is spent in a crib that amounts to little more than a cage.  They are very much neglected and abused.  Hard to know isn’t it?  Hard to imagine even, but undeniably true.

http://www.nogreaterjoymom.com/2012/02/power-of-one.html

So, WHY DON’T I ACT? I can see their little faces anytime I choose to look. (http://reecesrainbow.org/) I know it is true. I hate that it is happening in this world, and yet I do little or nothing.  This is where the wrestling comes in.  I want to know what the barriers are to action.  So I began to think what would happen if I took my kids to our favorite park.  As we walk up we see that there is a group of preschoolers with Down Syndrome and other disabilities.  Interested in what is going on, we take a closer look and are astounded to see a sign that says that these children must be adopted today or they will spend their lives in the conditions I described above.  How many of us would walk away?  I choose to believe that 90% of the people I know would only regret that they could only carry one or two of those babies out of there.  When I got home I would have to explain to our families and friends how we came to have a newly adopted special needs child.  They would ask me questions about how I would manage with our already busy lives and I would answer, “I don’t know yet, BUT I COULDN’T LEAVE HIM/HER THERE.”.  Again, I choose to believe that most of our loved ones would just nod in shocked agreement.  Now obviously for the sake of this argument we have to put all legalities and adoption ethics aside.  This is just a scenario for the sake of getting down to the bottom line.

This brings me to the question, Why does the child’s location really change things to the point that I can for the most part remain paralyzed?  I am still aware of a child who will go to a mental institution if I don’t act.  Here is my list:  I know after adopting our 5 kiddos that the adoption process is hard.  Especially here in Illinois where they look down on large families.  I am also a little overwhelmed by the money, after all we will be putting the 8 we have through college before we know it.  Then there is the travel.  Airplanes kind of scare me, and to be totally frank, Eastern Europe really scares me.  I don’t actually want to go there.  Also, there are days when I would like nothing more than to have children in my home forever, and then there are days when I am counting out the years until little man is twenty-one.  When I read this list I want to throw up.  Does it really come down to trading my list of whinny excuses for a child’s life in a cage in an institution.  REALLY?  There is no excuse on the planet that would matter to me if one of these children was actually in front of me…Not one!  And I wouldn’t be asking myself what Jesus would do, either because…DUH!

On to more questions.  In spite of what it sounds like, I don’t think everyone should go out and adopt a child with special needs from Eastern Europe.  The reality is that a few of us are going to be called to remote parts of the world to minister to unreached people groups.  A few are to go into the inner city and take on ministries so complex and demanding that we couldn’t safely care for a special needs child. These are just a few of the possible examples. Let’s also be real about the fact that some are not at a point of depending so fully on God’s capacity by the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling inside of us to make us able to do something as demanding as care for a child with challenges, forever.  BUT CHURCH, are there really so few?  Can that be true?  If not us, WHO? Aren’t we just like the worshipers who turned up the organ music to drown out the sound of the trains full of Jewish captives rattling by on Sunday morning?

So, I wrestle.  I am not announcing an adoption here as our answer is always “No, until it is yes.”  I am just letting you in on what is going on in my heart and head, these days.  I do have more questions than answers.

You might be disappointed that this is not a political rant.  Freedom and liberty truly can be suppressed by government power, but true freedom cannot be denied unless we deny it to ourselves.  I’ve been thinking about two lines from different songs the past few days:

“...it’s going to cost us everything to follow one Lord and King… to be free.” - Josh Garrells

“There’s something liberating death alone brings. There’s something funny about a lot of sad things. There’s something wonderful about love” - The Choir

In another song, The Choir pleads with us to “shake off those golden shackles”.  Freedom.  Dying to ourselves, dying to our desires, our goals, our physical needs, our fears… that’s real freedom.  Putting others first, truly abandoning ourselves and all that we feel we own, are owed, want, or need.  It’s going to cost us everything to be truly be free.

That’s how God set it up.  That whole first will be last and last will be first thing?  That’s not just some clouds in the sky pearly gates type of thing… that’s for the here and now also.  Freedom.  Liberty.  Joy.  We’ll find it when we pursue Him and His ideals, giving all we have and trusting Him entirely.