How Big is Your God?

O LORD, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath.
For your arrows have pierced me, and your hand has come down upon me.
Because of your wrath there is no health in my body; my bones have no soundness because of my sin. – Psalm 38:1-3 (NIV)

The Psalms can be a great source of comfort. But sometimes the Psalms confuse us with their in-your-face nature. Raw human emotion and overt displays of feelings of the writers can make the American mind uncomfortable. The writer has problems in his life. He characterized his life by rebuking, disciplining piercing and loss of health. Where does he lay the blame for his condition? He blames God for his condition. He understands God to be in control of all things, even the bad things he receives.

Many people believe God to be good. He brings good things into our lives. To protect the good God, they believe that bad things come from some other source. This kind of thought comes from an attempt to make God ‘nice’ or to excuse God for bad things that happen. How can a good god allow bad things to happen?

With this thinking, we run into problems when we read something like Psalm 38. The writer clearly blames his bad condition on God. This is the natural conclusion if God is all-powerful. All things come from God, not just good things. You can play semantics and say that God simply allows bad in the world, but the fact remains that an all-powerful God allowing bad to happen is the same as bad coming from God himself.

I would rather deal with the problem of bad things coming from an all-powerful God, than with a good God that cannot act in any way that He wants in any circumstance. I find comfort in the fact that God is in control and nothing in my life is outside of His ability to control.

Special Days

If you live seventy years, you will have lived over 25,000 days. Many of those days are routine, boring or normal. Very few days are memorable for the specific date. An example is September 11, 2001. The rest of the days just fade together. But there are a few days that are memorable, even if we cannot remember the date.

We remember days because of special activities or the people we were with on the day. I remember very few days at work, but I do remember taking trips with the kids to Chicago, Colorado, San Francisco and even Omaha. Some of these trips are memorable because of the good times, others because of the struggles. On our trip to Colorado it was a surprise for the boys, they did not know it until we were halfway across Kansas. Other special days come from what appear to be normal days.

We have a wood burning fireplace in our house and we will burn over five truckloads of wood each winter. A common activity is to go to the farm to cut wood. Last year, about this time, I went to the farm with my Dad. These trips were typical for our family, a time of being outside and working hard. Times like this with Dad had been different since he had cancer surgery six years ago. He did not have the lung capacity to work as he had, so it was more common for me to run the saw and for Dad to go along for the trip. This was becoming the new normal. Usually Dad would work harder than anyone. Regardless of his ability, he enjoyed being at the farm.

This day was different. We selected a spot and Dad ran the saw the whole day. I loaded the wood in the truck. It was just like years past. When we were done that day, Dad said ‘I had fun’. Some would not call hard, physical work fun. This is not the case in our family.

At the time, I knew it was different, but I took it as a sign of Dad being better. A few weeks later, we would get the news that Dad had a new cancer. Six months later, Dad died at home. Some days the National Football League teams wear uniforms from the past in a throwback game. That day I had a throwback day with Dad at the farm. It is a day I will always remember.