Fullness of Time

Some days it feels like I’m supposed to be a cheerleader at a funeral.

Some days it feels like I am doing hospice work

with a patient who is unaware of their own impending death.

Holy Shit

At the end of July I developed two of my previous posts on lamenting (Lament and The Lost Art of Lament) into a sermon. As part of the sermon I invited people to write down their laments on a piece of paper that was photocopied to look like a brick. The staff at church and I assembled the bricks into a “wailing wall” that is displayed at the entrance to our worship space.

I sat down at my desk the following Tuesday and began reading through all the laments that were emptied out onto the paper bricks in worship on that Sunday morning. There were laments about the state of our nation and the political process. There were laments about the civility of our society, random violence and even specific examples taken from the news. There were laments about the aging process, health concerns, illness, broken relationships, and personal failures. And of course, there were laments about the death.

When I finished reading the laments I sat quietly for a time marveling at the resiliency of the human spirit.

The Lost Art of Lamenting

The help we need to get through an emotionally difficult time doesn’t come from people who are not suffering. It comes from the people who know the same kind of suffering and who are willing to suffer with us. When we lament together as a community we admit that we are vulnerable and, at the same time, discover that we are not alone in our pain. That discovery often gives us the strength to work through the grief and help others cope as well.

Lament

As I return to my writing after a month-long sabbatical I am struck by the events of this summer, and especially this past weekend, that have left us shaking our heads and wondering, “Why?” From the seemingly every day tragedies reported on the news shows to the extreme cases like the shooting in Aurora, Colorado, the events surrounding the Penn State football program, and the disappearance of two young girls in a neighboring community we are faced with the various ways evil manifests itself in our life. Such a constant barrage of bad news leaves us in a precarious emotional state searching for some way to respond.

A Still Small Voice

There is a voice in my head that I believe is the voice of God. (See my previous two posts: The Voiceof God and Not My Voice.) One of the reasons I believe that it’s God’s voice and not my own internal monologue is that I can’t control it. I can’t will it to tell me something I want to know. I can’t even will it to speak to me at all.

Not My Voice

At first I was hesitant to believe that this voice I heard in my head was the actually God speaking to me. I’m still not one-hundred percent certain about it. At the time, there was only one way to find out if it was or if it wasn’t God speaking to me. So I started to listen.

The Voice of God

Trusting God implies that we know what God wants us to do. That’s not always so clear and it’s not hard to find different interpretations from different people. Where is that clear voice that speaks from another realm like it did for the people in the Bible?