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| posting to keep xanga. that's all. | | |
| Today, as I was driving home from one of my midterms, I was listening to a Hillsong worship song (I don't remember which one it was), and something came across my mind. Just to clarify, there are a ton of terms that I am using to describe God that are relative to us, his creation, even though they may not be an exact characteristic of God. He is simply too big for us to understand in his terms, so he has to degrade himself in a way to allow us to comprehend an inkling of him. Anyway, on to my thought...
Isn't God still hurting because of Christ's death on the cross?
As Good Friday approaches, this question resounds ever louder to me. Every lash, every insult, every second the perfect connection between Father and Son was broken, still pains him to think about. God was hurt when it actually happened, but wouldn't it make sense to say that he is still hurting now?
I understand that it happened some two thousand years ago, but isn't God outside of time? He is not bound to the timeline that we are on, and he exists in the past, present, and the future. That would mean that he still exists with Christ's death hurting him. He probably knew the crucifixion would unravel as it has since before time, but didn't it still hurt him to plan it out? As Christians, we're fixated on the never-ending love of God that is articulated by his relentless pursuit of creation. Yet, we talk and sing about the eternal pain and suffering of God when he sent his Son to pay the most unfair price of the sin of the world, without even giving a second thought to how he actually felt. | | |
| the need for communitySince graduating from Irvine, coming back from East Asia, and starting my tenure at Talbot, I've come to re-learn one very significant life lesson. I need community. Not only a community of marginal influence, but one that is deeply committed to the friendship and my well-being. I've found that when I don't have a community of close friends, three things happen:
1. I fall back into sin.
2. I start feeling inadequate.
3. My ministry begins to suffer.
Now these three occurrences are bound to happen even if I do have community, but the difference is that I have people who will convict, confront, and encourage me to make changes in my life. It's not horrible to struggle through this, but at the same time I feel stuck. As I labor through seminary towards what God has called me to, I need to find a community that will walk with me, yell at me, cry with me, and most importantly, pray with and for me.
It is definitely difficult to feel this way, but in the midst of in this "dark night of the soul," I take hope in the One who dwells within me. He has predestined that some would stand with me now. It is not because of anything that I did to cause God choose me before I was formed into community with Him, but I strive to seek that community with my brothers and sisters to draw me closer to His love and His character.
On a side note:
The prayers and encouragement of laypeople are almost sinfully coveted by pastors in a church structure that assumes the holiness and confidence of the ministers of the Word. Prayer and positive words for pastors probably take place quite often, but hearing about it doesn't compare to joy of actually hearing it.
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