I share this with you because I know I’ve often thought that something big has to happen when I’m with the Lord, but with each morning I sit with Him, trusting He’s sitting with me in my living room, I know something very important is happening though there are no earthquakes nor divine theological revelations. It’s as if we’re good friends who can sit together in silence.
Often, after I’ve sat there for some time, I will feel a nudge to read something from one of the books sitting on my coffee table. Today, I just happened to have The Jesus I Never Knew written by Phillip Yancey on my table. A friend had borrowed it, and she brought it back last week. That’s as far as the book got- it never made it to it’s bookshelf- and this morning I was thankful it hadn’t. I felt the nudge to open it, and this is what I read:
“One question, however no longer gnaws at me as it once did, a question that I believe lurks behind most of our issues with God; ‘Does God Care?’ I know of only one way to answer that question, and it has come through my study of the life of Jesus. In Jesus, God gave us a face, and I can read directly in that face how God feels about people like the youth pastor (who’s wife and baby have AIDS) and the blind man who never gave me his name. By no means did Jesus eliminate suffering– but he did signify an answer to the questions of whether God cares.
Three times that we know of, suffering drove Jesus to tears. He wept when his friend Lazarus died….Another time, tears came to Jesus when he looked out over Jerusalem and realized that fate awaiting that fabled city….Not even God, with all his power, can force a human being to love.
Finally, Hebrews tells us, Jesus, ‘offered up…loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death.’ But of course he was not saved from death. Is it too much to say that Jesus himself asked the question that haunts most of us at one time or another: Does God care? What else can be the meaning of this quotation from the dark psalm, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’
p. 160-161
Death has struck again this week taking away a dear friend’s love of her life. They had hoped to marry. I know she sits in a puddle of grief mixed with the hope of heaven. Perhaps the direction of Holy Spirit was for her today.
God cares. Even Jesus asked to have the cup of death be removed, and it was not. He felt forsaken, yet there was a more glorious plan in store.
I’m going to ponder this today. Will you join me? What would our days be if we sat silently in His love every day? (At least for awhile.) Let Him lead you. No rules to follow in prayer. Not today. Just sit and know He cares.
Much love,
andy
