Theologian Martin Scharlemann wrote someplace that a minister’s task is to interpret reality theologically. Many people have been trying to do just that about Boston. Where’s God when evil people get away with terrible crimes? How should our Christian faith take the shock?
Now an explosion in Waco. Apparently not a crime, just an accident, but still terrible. Luke 13:1-5 offers some insight, the collapse of a tower in Siloam that killed 18 people. OK, but by this time of the week I’m tired of trying to “interpret reality theologically.” I just want to go away and not hear any more bad news.
God did not design Adam and Eve to take these shocks, or, for that matter, many of the shocks you and I take throughout life. We were intended for perfect communion with God, not for so much of what this sinful world gives us. The ancient rabbis said that God felt sorry for Adam and Eve when He ejected them from Paradise. So He gave them a gift to help them cope with the tough world they were entering, the gift of tears.
That is why all the passages in the Bible about rest are so important. When the news has us hit bottom in trying to understand, when the demands of work are relentless, when the weather wreaks havoc, when we just want to give up… We should. Jesus says, “Come Me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” (Mark 6:31) In that rest after this hard week of news and everything else that has gone on in your life… In getting up the courage to leave some things undone… In disciplining yourself to do nothing, just sit there… exist…be… In that the Spirit will interpret reality theologically.
“When peace, like a river, attendeth my way; when sorrows, like sea billows, roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, ‘It is well, it is well with my soul.”
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