The Occasional Occurence

There was some good discussion last Sunday in my Sunday-School class. As is normal, I forgot my Bible, and had to slyly peek over at the one belonging to the person next to me. That didn't work out so well and I wound up - get this - mostly just listening to what everyone else was saying. The discussion went here and there and everywhere as it seems to do when the discussion is centered on an Old Testament text. We have been going through some of the prophetic books, and happened to be in Micah yesterday. It was mainly another message of "turn from your wickedness, Oh Israel, or beware!", but someone (Geoff B. I think) raised an interesting point:

"When God wants to get the attention of his people, he reminds them of what he has done for them in the past."

These prophets would come and remind the current generation of how God provided for them long ago, how they were slipping up at present, and what the future would look like if they continued on their way. But the thing that stood out to me was the history.

My brother-in-law John is a history buff. He studied it as an undergrad, taught it to kids in Costa Rica, and is getting his M.A. to teach it here in Ohio. The other day while he was over, he commented that history is the most important subject. Everyone kind of just went "huh". While I don't think that there is a "the most important" subject, I think that history is probably more important that I give it credit, especially in a personal sense.

Sometimes I get derailed by the present. I just go along taking care of myself and my family, pretty well handling things on my own. God starts to seem a little distant, dare I say, a little irrelevant to the happenings of daily life.

That's why last Sunday was such an eye-opener.

I need to consider my history with God. Israel's is all fine and dandy. God certainly provided for them. But he has done it for me too. I need to write the book of Wyglendowski. It won't be long. It would probably sit pretty well next to Philemon or something. But darn it, God has done some pretty great things in my life that I tend to forget, just like those crazy Israelites.

So, now that I am going to write my own "book of the Bible" I should probably get busy with that. But I have more to say.

Gladys, who has many "interesting" things to say was actually downright prophetic during our Sunday-School discussion (at least to me). She always talks about the Amish community that she grew up in. She said that (paraphrasing) "they held too close to just the Bible and didn't leave any room for Christian spirituality."

See, the other portion of scripture that we had read about was a prophecy of the Messiah. Most of Israel missed the boat on him. He was right there, and they looked past him. They clung so tightly to their scripture (which does speak of a ruling Messiah) that they missed him when he appeared. He came to bring as a different sort of king over a different sort of kingdom. But I can sympathize with them just based on reading the scripture.

I guess my main rambling thought is this: our personal and communal testaments of God's hand in our lives are just as important as scripture. The scripture of the Old Testament was Israel's story. If you are a Christian, you and your church are living your own scripture. What's your story? What's mine?

cw

Here are a couple questions that Curtis (our 3-and-a-half year old) has asked me in the past 24 hours:

Dad, did God make microbes?

I think I stumbled through ok on this one. Something like:

Well Curtis, there are many good microbes, and even microbes that would be bad to get in our bodies have their place in nature.

Next question.

Dad, did God make tornadoes?

The tornadoes one; now that's a bit tougher. I don't think I have ever heard of a beneficial tornado. The pretty much only bring death and destruction. The best that I could do was try and explain that nature often displays the power of God, and that tornadoes are very powerful.

There are many things in the natural world other than tornadoes that are really destructive or at least certainly not beneficial to humans.

Volcanic eruptions. Mosquitoes. AIDS. Tsunamis. Lawyers.

Seriously though, maybe the real answer for Curtis (that I wouldn't lay on his innocent heart at his tender age) is that death is part of life. God created life and the absence thereof; death, as we call it.

Consider what God has done:

Who can straighten what he has made crooked?

When times are good, be happy;

but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other.

Ecclesiastes 7:13-14a

So we are screwed, right? Nah. We've got what we've got, and we need to be content in that*.

Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised.

Job 1:21

Anyhow, as a parting thought; for those of you planning on raising your kids in a belief system, get ready for the tough questions. They can start coming pretty early.

cw

* Easy for me to say as a white middle class American, I suppose. I hope and pray that I would be able to say the same in other circumstances.

My good friend Ryan recently posted some thoughts about hearing from and praying to God:

Some honest questions from an honest person who has been a “Christian” for some time now.

“How does one hear God?” Lately, I’ve heard lots of people begin their sentences with “I felt like God was telling me…” or “God seems to be moving me…” and the famous, “God told me clearly…” uh!, am I just not hearing from God like these people are or what?

I have asked the same question before on a number of occasions. There are a number of cases in the Bible where God audibly speaks to someone with an important message. Like Ryan said, we all hear people who at some point have "heard" from God. But I, personally, have not heard His "voice".

I think something that my eyes have been opened to since moving back to Ohio and joining First Mennonite Church is how God can speak to us through the community that is the church. Maybe I have been brainwashed by the Mennonite ideal of the importance of the community, but I really have seen this lately. As far as I know, the church has been the only physical representative of God on earth since the time of Christ. I think that it is wholly scriptural that one of the ways that God speaks to us today is through the church; the church is "The Body of Christ", after all.

Another way that we can hear from God is through scripture. I took quite a hiatus from reading scripture. I have been a Christian for many years. The Bible started to feel old. I recently picked it back up on the advice of one of my brothers-in-law. It has been a good experience. Even though the text of the book has not changed, I have changed so the words strike me in new ways.

So, no, nothing audible here. But I think that the Bible is more an account of the exceptional than the ordinary. The miracles always get all the press. So just because everyone in the Bible is seeing a burning bush or an angel or something doesn't mean that it is the real norm, in my opinion.

That is not to say that God can't/doesn't do those kind of things today. I think He probably does. But I don't think it is something that we should sweat if we haven't seen it in our limited personal experience.

Then, there’s the issue of prayer that has no doubt brought about many mis-guided agendas I’m sure. At my former “Christian” schools I would hear things like “God is answering our prayers because x number of students signed up for next year,” or we need to be praying specifically that God would bring x number of students so our enrollment goes up” Does God care about students signing up for a “Christian” school so they can balance the budget? Does God care about our baseball games and whether or not they get rained out or the church picnics who are prayed for routinely for sun-shiney weather? Does God care about my decisions? I’m sure He does, but to what extent?

This is another one that I have also pondered. Why should I ever pray for some "bonus" for my life when there are so many others in the world just struggling to survive? Looking at the blessings in my life, I hardly feel justified requesting much of anything from God for myself.

On the other hand, there are places in the Bible where it seems like we should be asking God for things. What those things are exactly, I don't know.

I guess I pray for my children, and my wife. I pray for friends. Are those the right things? Speaking of children, is that how we should approach God - with the faith of a child? How should that play out, exactly? Children can be quite selfish in their requests (trust me, I know this :-) ).

Sorry Ryan, not too many answers here. Basically I just wanted to share a similar experience. You aren't alone, man.

cw

The moving van is loaded. We are sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Hopefully we have a place to move into on Tuesday.

It has been a roller coaster ride this weekend. Our lender has thrown a hissy fit about problems with the furnace in the new house, even though the seller is replacing it and wanted to escrow the money so we could close on Tuesday. The bank told us 1.5 business days before closing that they weren't going to proceed on the day we had been planning for for a month. Bastards (pardon my French, and if you are French, pardon that expression). ;-)

Our real estate agent worked hard this weekend trying to get the seller to agree to us renting the place until the closing. Things looked bleak yesterday evening and she said it wasn't working out. I called Uhaul to cancel our truck for today, and when I told her that, I think she was a bit surprised. She must have negotiated really hard, because she called back and said we had a deal and could move in. I called Uhaul back up and got a truck again. Whew. The Uhaul guy was really cool about it all and didn't charge us any extra fees or anything.

So there you go. The moral of this story, I think, is that no matter how on the ball you are in life, things can go down the tubes in a hurry. Maybe this was a little wake-up call from God saying; "Hey there Mr. and Mrs. Everything-Under-Control, remember me?" In any event, that was the message we got. I think that is a good thing.

cw

Wow. I have only three days left at my current job as Network Administrator at Greenville College. I have been there for 4 1/2 years. It was my first "real" job out of college, and it has been a great place to learn and grow. I am really going to miss everyone in IT and lots of others around campus as well.

There is no doubt I am going to miss the general Greeville experience as well; the dinky little overpriced grocery store where we knew all the checkers, the quiet streets that are great for taking walks, the local newspaper complete with its Ag and NASCAR sections, the local independent FM station with a really good morning show and great old-timey country and bluegrass twice a week.

Change is a good thing though. Time for new experiences and new challenges. This morning in church, our pastor challenged the American cultural notion that pain is bad. He drew examples from the Bible that demonstrate how character is formed from painful experiences. There is sure to be some "pain" from this transition from employee-to-independent-contractor, from utopia-small-town-to-city, from regular-family-unit-to-regular-family-unit-plus-mother-in-law, but along with the "pain" there will be opportunities to grow in character and in faith.

I'm looking forward to the adventure.

cw