When Days Attack

            The great philosopher, Charlie Brown, once observed, “I try to take life one day at a time. It’s just that lately, several days have attacked me at once.”

            Well, I’ve been there.  I’ll bet you have, too.  Don’t get me wrong here.  I’m not complaining about my life.  I have a wonderful life.  I’ve written before about how much I love the things I do, and that’s still true.  I would not trade my life or my job for anything.

            It’s just that, no matter what we do, we all have times when our lives get really busy.  These are times when, no matter how hard we try, it seems like there just aren’t enough hours in the day to do all the things we want to do.  The thing that makes it even harder is when all the things we want to do are good things.  We’re not having to choose between doing a good thing and doing a bad thing, or even between doing a bad thing and doing a neutral thing.  We’re having to choose between doing one good thing or doing another good thing.

            So what do we do?  How do we decide what to do when we know we can’t do everything?

            Well, for one thing, we have to prioritize.  I know that’s not exactly a novel idea, but it’s not as easy as it sounds.  We have to figure out which of the good things we want to do are the most important.  We also have to figure out which of the good things we want to do have to be done right now, as opposed to the good things that can wait a while.  That’s a tricky thing, too, though.  As the old saying goes, the thing that can be done at any time is often the thing that never gets done at all.  The fact that something may not be urgent does not mean that it should be put off indefinitely.

            Another thing we need to do is not put too much pressure on ourselves.  No one expects us to do everything, and certainly no one expects us to do everything today.  It’s okay to leave some things to be done tomorrow.  After all, even God does not expect us to do everything.  God expects us to do everything we can, but God understands that we only have twenty-four hours in a day and seven days in a week, and God knows that we cannot work every one of those hours.  We should not demand more of ourselves than God does.

            Not only can we not do everything, but we should not try to do everything.  When we do, we sometimes don’t allow room for others to do things.  Sometimes, when we don’t get things done, others will pick up the slack.  If they don’t, then perhaps some things just won’t get done.  That can be okay sometimes, too.

            Finally, we need to remember that there is no such thing as an indispensible person.  If you or I passed away today, the world would continue.  It was here long before we came, and it will be here long after we’re gone.  That does not excuse us for doing what we can, but it should help us realize that it’s okay for us to stop and take a breath once in a while.  After all, Jesus occasionally went off by himself to rest, to pray, and to think.  If Jesus did it, it’s okay for us to do it, too.  Doing that helps us get centered and remember the joy we get from doing the things we do.

            It can feel, sometimes, like several days are attacking us at once.  If we just stay calm, trust God, do our best, and keep plugging away, though, things will be work out.  God will make the time for us to do the things we need to do, and God will take care of the things we don’t have time to get to.  All we need to do is relax and trust God to help us.

The More Excellent Way

This is the message given at the worship service at Oahe Manor Sunday, February 12, 2012.  The scripture is 1 Corinthians 13:1-13.

            This passage is one that pastors love to preach on.  It’s one that most people like to hear, too.  It has a message about love, and that’s a message that we always need to hear.  The message that God loves us, the message that God is love, the message that love is the most important thing of all, is one that never gets old for us.

            And that’s all fine.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  But there’s more to this passage than we might realize.  It’s not just a nice, sweet message about the importance of love.  It’s okay to feel good when we hear this passage, but there’s more to this passage than just good feelings.  This passage is about a way of life.

            If you were here for the communion service Thursday, you may remember that we talked about how we are all part of the body of Christ, and how we each have a different part within that body.  Sometimes that part may seem like a really big part and sometimes it may seem like a smaller part, but all of the parts are important.  But at the end of the passage we read last week, after going through all the different types of gifts and telling us that we each have a part to play, Paul says this:  strive for the greatest gifts.  And I will show you a still more excellent way.

            What we read today is that greater gift.  What we read today is that more excellent way.  That greater gift, that more excellent way, is love.

            Listen again to how Paul describes love.  Love is patient.  Love is kind.  Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.  Love does not insist on its own way.  Love is not irritable or resentful.  Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

            You know, when you think about it, that’s a pretty tough standard.  None of those things is easy.  Patience is not always easy to have.  It’s not always easy to show kindness.  It’s hard to not envy others sometimes.  Slipping into boastfulness or arrogance, or even rudeness, can be easy to do.  It’s hard for us not to want our own way, especially when we’re convinced that we’re right.  When things are not going well for us, it’s easy to start feeling irritable or resentful.  Paul’s description of love may sound really nice, but it’s a lot tougher when we actually try to put it into practice.

            And what makes this especially hard is that love is no good if we only show it on a part-time basis.  We are not called just to show love when it’s easy or convenient.  Love that just makes itself known once in a while is not really love.  For love to be effective, we have to show love all the time.  And there are times in our lives when we just don’t feel like doing that.  Love may be the more excellent way, but it’s not the way that always comes naturally to us.

            See, this passage was not written just to make us feel good.  It was written to challenge us.  Love is not something that we just sit around and have.  As Paul says, love is something we’re called to strive for.  Love is something we have to work at.  We need to consciously try to show love to others.  It’s not like we can get up one day and make a decision to love others and that’s the end of it.  We have to constantly renew that decision every day, sometimes every hour of the day.  We need to make love a way of life if we’re going to show the kind of love that God calls us to show.

            But even that’s not really enough.  Because no matter how hard we try to love, we’ll never be able to do it the way we’re supposed to as long as we try to do it by ourselves.  The only way to truly feel love and show love, the only way to make love a way of life, is to rely on God.

            The reason love is the more excellent way is that love is the more God-like way.  The reason love never ends is because God never ends, and God is love.  For God, love is a way of life—love is a natural part of God, as natural as breathing is to us.  The reason this standard is so hard is that when we’re called to love, we’re called to be like God, and who here can be like God?  Not me.  Not any of us.  It’s not possible for any of us to truly be like God, and it’s not possible for any of us to have love be a way of life for us the way it is for God.

            Even so, we need to do the most we can.  Because when we love others, we reflect God.  We don’t become God, we don’t even become like God, really, but we give people a glimpse of what God is like.  It may be a poor reflection, a dim mirror, as Paul says, but it’s still a reflection.  When we love others, we bring God to them.

            And you know what else?  We also bring God to ourselves.  Because we cannot show God’s love to others if we don’t feel it ourselves.  We cannot bring God to others if we don’t have God’s spirit within us.  And it’s only by having God’s spirit in us that we can, in any way, make love a way of life.

            So, while this passage was written to challenge us, it was also written as a gift to us.  It was not written just to call us to show love to others.  It was also written to help us make love a way of life, so that we can feel God’s love in our lives.

            Love is the more excellent way because God is love.  May we all feel God's love in our lives.  And may we go out and show God's love to others so that, through us, they may feel God's love in their lives.  As much as we can, let's make love a way of life for us, just as it is for God.

Playing Your Part

This is the message that was given for the communion service at Oahe Manor on February 9, 2012.  The scripture is 1 Corinthians 12:12-31.

            There’s an old story about how all the different parts of the body were arguing about which one of them should be the leader.  The brain started out and said, “Well, all the thoughts, all the ideas for what we do come from me, so clearly I should be the leader.”  The heart said, “Yeah, but I’m the one who gives us all our emotions, all our feelings.  All of our good motivations come from me, so I should be the leader.”  The eyes said, “Well, but I’m the one who provides the vision, who makes sure we know where we’re going, so I should be the leader.”  And one by one, all the various parts of the body made their arguments why they should be the leader.  Finally, the neck started to say why it should be the leader, but before it could even get started, all the other body parts started making fun of it.  They said, “You, the leader?  What good are you?  All you do is hold the head up.  Why in the world would we make you the leader?”

            Well, the neck got really mad at that, so it tightened all its muscles and constricted all its blood vessels, and pretty soon the brain began to feel a pounding, and the heart was having to work a lot harder to pump blood, and everything in the body was feeling really bad.  And so all the body parts said to the neck, “Okay, okay, you can be the leader.”

            The moral of this story is that being a leader doesn’t really require brains or heart or vision.  Sometimes all you have to do to be a leader is to be a pain in the neck.

            Both this story and our scripture today illustrate how we all have different parts to play in life.  The role we play differs at different times and in different situations, but no matter what the time or situation is, we always have some part to play.  Sometimes it may be a big part, and sometimes it may be a small part, but we always have a part.  And sometimes, what seems to us to be the smallest, least important part can turn out to be the most important part of all.

            There are some of you whom I’ve gotten to know fairly well, and others of you whom I’m just starting to get to know.  But I know that all of us have done a lot of things in our lives.  There have been times when we’ve done big, important things that have gotten us a lot of attention.  There are other times when we’ve done smaller things that have been a part of something much bigger.  And there are other times when we’ve just gone about the business of living our lives, not really even thinking about what we’re doing or how it might fit into the larger scheme of things.

            The longer I live, and the more I think about it, I think those are the times that matter the most:  the times when we just go about the business of living our lives.  You know, there’s an old saying that it’s much better to see a sermon than to hear one.  I think that’s true.  I think the times when we’re not trying to persuade anyone, not trying to influence anyone, but are simply living our lives, doing the best we can to be good people, doing the best we can to be God’s people, doing the best we can to show love to our neighbors—those are the times when we can have the most impact on other people. 

When we do something for someone with no thought of what we might get in return; when we treat people with respect and compassion; when we’re honest with people; when we treat people with kindness—those are the things that have the most impact.  Because those are the things that show people that we really mean what we say, that there really is something about following Jesus that’s making a difference in our lives.  And when people see that following Jesus makes a difference in our lives, they’re much more likely to want Jesus to make that same difference in their lives.

            We can have that kind of influence at any time of our lives.  And that includes when you come to live in a place like this.  I know this has to have been a hard transition for some of you.  The part you have to play has changed, sometimes against your will.  You might wish that you could have kept playing the part you were playing before, but that simply was not the way things worked out.

            Instead, you have a different part to play.  Maybe it seems like it’s a smaller part.  Maybe it seems like it’s a part that really is not very important.  Maybe it seems like it’s a part that really does not matter at all.

            But it does matter.  That’s what our scripture is telling us.  All the parts are important.  What seem like the smaller parts are just as important as what seem like the bigger parts.  It takes all of the parts for the body to function.  God arranged all the parts to work together.  Each one of those parts is necessary for God’s plan.

            Each one of you is far more important than you might imagine.  Whether you realize it or not, you are important.  You make an impact on people every day, just by the way you live your lives.  Each one of you is an important part of the body.  Each one of you is an important part of God’s plan.  And each one of you is very important to God.

Happy Endings

Below is the messsage given in the Wheatland Parish Sunday, February 12, 2012.  The scriptures are Genesis 37:2-28, Genesis 39:1-20, Genesis 41:14-40, Genesis 42:1-3, 6-8, and Genesis 45:1-15.

            This is the last in our sermon series on stories from Genesis.  We did not come close to talking about all the stories we could’ve talked about.  We did not talk about Adam and Eve, or about the tower of Babel.  We skipped right over Jacob.    We talked about one aspect of Abraham’s life last week, but there was enough there that we could’ve done a whole sermon series just on him.  The same thing applies to Joseph, who we’re going to talk about in a little bit.

            I hope you’ve gotten a lot of out of this sermon series.  I know I have.  I hope it’s gotten us to really think about some of these stories we’ve heard ever since we were kids.  I hope it’s gotten us to think about how God could do the things God does in Genesis and still be a loving, caring God.

            What we’ve found, I think, is that God, in Genesis, is a loving, caring God.  It’s just that God’s love and care does not always take the form we’d like it to take.  Sometimes God’s love consists of warnings.  Sometimes God’s love consists of tests.  Sometimes God’s love consists of having to let us sink, to make sure we don’t harm others.  In all of these things, though, God gives us second chances, if only we’ll turn to God to accept them.

            Another thing we’ve tried to do in this sermon series is to think about how the people involved felt when they were going through the events described.  Because these stories are familiar to some of us, we sometimes take for granted that there was a happy ending.  There was, but the people who actually lived these stories did not know there was going to be a happy ending.  They had to live these stories one day at a time, the way we all live our lives, and they did not know what the future held or what was going to happen next.

            It seems like that’s especially true in the story of Joseph, which we read today.  Joseph had a lot of things happen to him in his life.  Some were terrible, and some were wonderful.  He had times when he was on top of the world, when it looked like everything was going right and it always would.  He also had times when he hit rock bottom, when he had no idea how or even if he was going to survive until tomorrow.  Joseph had times when he was in control of everything around him, and times when he was in control of absolutely nothing.  He experienced highs that were as high and lows that were as low as any human can experience.

            In our first reading, Joseph’s brothers sold Joseph to be a slave in Egypt.  Think about that.  This was family, and family was a really big thing in ancient Israel.  That’s why all those long lists of genealogies appear in the Old Testament.  Joseph probably knew his brothers did not like him very much, but still, this kind of hatred had to have caught him completely by surprise.

            Joseph had to have wondered what he’d done to deserve this.  I certainly would.  In fact, I have, in certain situations.  You probably have, too.  We all have those situations where we’re sitting around, minding our own business, and all at once it feels like the roof has fallen in on us.  Maybe we can look back and see something we did that was not all that smart and contributed to it, but still, we don’t feel like we deserved all this.  We wonder what in the world is going on.

            Joseph did what most of us do in that situation, though.  He tried to make the best of it.  He was sold to a man named Potiphar, who was one of the officers of the Pharaoh, and so was a man of considerable wealth and influence.  Joseph worked hard for Potiphar.  He worked his way up the ranks of the slaves until he was put in charge of everything Potiphar had.  He was still a slave, of course, but things were looking pretty good for Joseph.  He must have thought his future looked pretty bright.

            And just at that point, Joseph gets knocked down again.  Not only was he not at fault in any way, he actually behaved better than many of us might have in the situation he was in.  Potiphar’s wife tried several times to seduce him, and when he refused, she claimed that Joseph had attacked her and had him thrown in prison.

            By this time, Joseph really had to wonder why all this was happening.  Think about it.  One of the worst things that could happen to someone had happened to him:  he’d been sold into slavery.  He’d stayed faithful to God, he’d made the best of it, and it looked like things were going to be all right after all.  Then, he had something even worse happen to him.  He was thrown into an Egyptian prison, and prison back then was nothing like what prison is now.  Not only had he done nothing to deserve to be in prison, he was in prison specifically because he’d been faithful to God and had done what God wanted him to do.  It probably seemed to Joseph like he’d have been better off if he’d ignored what God wanted and had gone ahead and slept with Potiphar’s wife like she’d wanted him to.

            Again, I’ll bet a lot of us have been there.  We get knocked down for no particular reason, we get back up, we start making progress, we think things are going to work out after all, and BOOM, we get knocked down even harder.  It’s a hard thing to deal with.  It’s even harder to deal with when we feel like we were doing everything we could do to follow God and do what God wanted us to do.  We feel like we should get rewarded for that, and instead, it feels like we’re getting punished.

            In the end, of course, it all works out for Joseph.  He is called out of prison, interprets Pharaoh’s dream, and gets put in charge of everything in Egypt.  He even reconciles with his brothers.  He tells his brothers that, no matter how things may have seemed, God was working in all of this, and that things happened the way God wanted them to happen, no matter what they or anyone else may have intended.

            Everyone likes a happy ending, of course.  The thing is that, in telling the story, the Bible leaves out an awful lot.  A lot of years passed during this story.  Joseph was seventeen when he was sold into slavery.  He was thirty when he was made the second-in-command to the Pharaoh.  That means thirteen years went by.  For all of those thirteen years he was a slave.  Sometimes he was a respected slave with a lot of responsibility, but he was still a slave.  For some of those years, he was in prison.  We read this story and we see the happy ending, but Joseph did not know there was going to be a happy ending.  He had no idea what was going to happen to him in the future.  He had to live the story day by day, not knowing what was coming next.

            Which, again, is the way we all live our lives.  Each of our lives tells a story, in a sense.  We hope the story will have a happy ending, but we don’t know if it will.  Sometimes it seems like things are going well, but a lot of times it seems like they’re not.  A lot of those times when they’re not, we have no idea why or what to do to change it.  We have no idea what’s going to happen to us in the future.  We have to live the story day by day, not knowing what’s coming next.

            It can be really hard, sometimes, to stay faithful to God in the ups and downs of our lives.  It can be really hard, sometimes, to keep trusting God when we have to live our stories one day at a time, not knowing what the future may hold for us.  We want to believe in the happy ending, but we have no guarantee that it will come.  We also have no guarantee that staying faithful to God will cause it to come, at least not in this world.  Stephen stayed faithful to God and he was stoned to death.  Paul stayed faithful to God and he died in a Roman prison.  There are lots of other examples we could think of, too.

            I think the point of the story of Joseph is not that staying faithful to God guarantees us a happy ending in this world.  The point of the story of Joseph is that God asks us to be faithful in all circumstances, regardless of what’s happening now and regardless of what may happen in the future.  God asks us to be faithful when we’re on top and we think things are going to be wonderful.  God also asks us to be faithful when we’re on the bottom and we don’t see a way out no matter where we look.  God asks us to be faithful in all the times in between, too.

            We live our lives day by day, not knowing what’s coming next.  Through all the ups and downs, though, there are things we do know.  We know that God is there.  We know that God loves us.  We know that God has promised to be with us, and we know that God keeps God’s promises.  If we can hold onto that as we go through our daily lives, God will help us handle the ups and downs, just like God helped Joseph handle them.  We can do it.  When we stay faithful, God does promise us a happy ending, if not in this world, then in the next one.

Channeling Our Passion

            I’ve written before that we need to passionate about spreading the word of God and growing each church in this parish.  The natural question then, is what do I mean by “passionate”?  What would that passion look like?

            Well, for one thing, passion cannot be phony or fake.  If we do not feel passionate about something, we cannot pretend that we are, at least not for very long.  We can try, for a while, but we won’t succeed.  If we don’t truly feel passion, people are eventually going to figure that out.

            Passion is defined as a powerful or compelling emotion or feeling.  What that means is that true passion is a matter of the heart, not of the mind.  Just as we cannot fake passion when we don’t have it, we cannot conceal it if we do.  Again, we can try, for a while, but we won’t succeed.  When we feel passionate about something, eventually people are going to see that.

            What I’m saying, then, is that passion either exists or it doesn’t.  We cannot, by force of will, make ourselves feel passionate about something when we don’t.  We also cannot make ourselves stop feeling passionate about something when we do.  Again, passion is a matter of the heart, not of the mind.

            Where the mind comes into the picture, though, is in channeling that passion into something that can serve God.  Le me explain what I mean by that.

            Start by thinking of something that you are passionate about, something that you love to do and are going to try to find a way to do anyway.  It could be anything.  It could be fishing.  It could be quilting.  It could be working on cars.  It could be cooking.  It could be going to sports events.  It could be poetry.  Our passions are as different and varied as we are.  I’m sure I haven’t even come close to hitting the passions of all the people of our parish have.

            Now that you’ve thought of that, think of other people you know who are also passionate about that same thing.  The chances are you already know them, because we tend to attract and be attracted by people who are passionate about the same things we are.

            Next, think of a way you can turn the thing you’re passionate about into a group event.  Again, the chances are you already do this to a certain extent, although maybe not in any systematic or organized way.  Think of a group that could go fishing together.  Think of a group that could work on quilts or cars together.  Think of a group that could cook together, or go to sports events together, or read poetry together.  I’m not saying you have to do this every week, or even on a regular basis, although you could do it that way if you chose.  I’m just talking about getting together with a group of people of who have the same passion you do.

            Now, think of a way your group could do something to serve God by doing the thing that you’re all passionate about.  Maybe you take the fish you catch and donate them to the food pantry.  Maybe you make quilts to be given to needy families.  Maybe you work on the car of someone who doesn’t have the money to get their car fixed.  Maybe you make meals for people who are sick or hurting.  Maybe you take a group of kids to the ball game.  Maybe you make poetry books to give to shut-ins.  These are just a few examples of what could be done.  The things these groups could do are only limited by our imaginations.

            Do you see how this works?  It doesn’t take special skills or talents to reach out to people.  It doesn’t take huge amounts of money.  What it takes is a desire to use the skills and talents God has already given to each one of us in God’s service.

            You may be thinking, okay, I can see how these would be good things to do, but how do they grow the church?  In a few ways.  For one thing, when we, as a church, go out of our way to help people, they sometimes do start coming to church.  We don’t help people for that reason, but it does sometimes happen.  For another thing, when we, as a church, go out of our way to help people, that gets noticed in the community, and it’s attractive to people.  People who have been thinking about coming to church will chose our church, because they can see the things our church is doing.

            There’s a more important way that things like this grow the church, though.  When we go out of our way to help people, we are showing God’s love to them.  When we go out of our way to show God’s love to people, God will bless that.  The blessing may not come immediately, and it may not come the way we thought it would, but the blessing will surely come.  When a church receives God’s blessings, there is nothing it cannot do.

            There is no reason each of the churches of this parish cannot have several of these groups.  There’s no need for the pastor to be involved in all of them.  These are things each person in this parish, from the oldest to the youngest, can do.  The only thing holding us back is ourselves.  When we take the passions God gave us and use them in God’s service, there is nothing we cannot do.

Passing the Test

Below is the text of the message in the Wheatland Parish for Sunday, February 5, 2012.  The scriptures are Genesis 22:1-19 and Matthew 4:1-11.

            I graduated from law school in the spring of 1984 and took the bar exam that summer.  I started seminary in 2006.  That means that I went over twenty-two years without having to take a test.

            I don’t know anyone who actually likes taking tests.  There probably are people who do; after all, God made each one of us different.  If you do, more power to you.  I’m sure that attitude helps you.  Even though I usually did fairly well on tests, though, I never really liked them.

            One of the reasons I did not like taking tests is that, the farther along you get in school, the more important those tests become.  I had classes where the vast majority of your grade would come from the final exam.  With the bar exam, of course, my ability to enter my chosen profession was at stake.  That’s a lot of pressure, you know?  Yes, you can take the test again, but they only give the bar exam every once in a while, and in the mean time I’d have had to find something else to do with my life, because I would not have been able to practice as a lawyer.  There was a lot riding on my ability to pass that test.

            That’s probably the biggest reason we don’t like tests.  We’re afraid we’ll fail, and we know that failing a test has consequences.  It’s bad enough when failing a test means we’ll fail a class.  It’s even worse when failing a test means we cannot enter the profession we want to go into.  It’s harder still, though, when we fail a test that’s given to us by God.

            The thing about those tests given to us by God, too, is that we usually don’t even realize it’s a test until after it’s over.  In school, we know in advance when a test is coming.  Yes, there are such things as pop quizzes, but we’re not likely to fail just because we mess up a pop quiz.  For the big tests, the finals, the ones that really determine our grade, we’re told when they’ll be.  We get time to prepare.  That’s not the way it works with God’s tests.  That certainly is not how it worked for Abraham and Isaac in our reading from Genesis today.

            We know from the outset that God was testing Abraham because the Bible says so in the first verse of our reading.  From what we can tell, though, Abraham had no idea that this was a test.  Abraham is minding his own business one day when God pops up.  God says, “Abraham!”  Abraham says, “Here I am.”  And God says, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah.  Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”

            That’s it.  No explanation of what was going on.  Not even a hint of what God might be up to.  No recognition that this was going to be hard for Abraham.  No apology from God for asking Abraham to do such a hard thing.  Not the slightest bit of sympathy for Abraham at all.  God did not even tell Abraham exactly where they were going.  Just “go to this area that’ll take you three days to get to and when you get there, kill your son as a sacrifice to me.”

            Can any of us even imagine such a thing?  Think about it.  You’re at work or at home or whatever, just going about your business, and God shows up.  Without no explanation, with no sympathy or caring, God tells you to take your son or daughter and go to, say, Arizona.  God then says, “when you get there, I’ll show you a mountain for you to go up and kill your child on.”  Oh, and add to this the fact that child is the only child you have, and that you and your spouse had been trying for years and years to have a child and had pretty much given up when finally this child came along.

            Can you even imagine how Abraham must have felt?  I cannot.  Can you even try to imagine the conversation between Abraham and his wife, Sarah, about this?  Everything in them must have been saying “No.  We cannot do this.  We’re not going to do this.  God should not be telling us to do this.  This is totally unfair.  This makes no sense.  This has to be wrong.  It cannot possibly be God’s will for us to kill our only son, the son we’ve waited so many years to have.”  That must have been the worst night of their lives.

            We know what happened, though.  They were obedient.  The next morning, Abraham loaded up his donkey with supplies, got Isaac and a couple of servants, and they set out.  God told Abraham about the right mountain, and they went there.  Abraham got Isaac ready to be sacrificed.  It was not until the last possible second, after Abraham had his knife out, that God said this had all been a test and that Isaac was not to be killed.

            I wonder why God put Abraham through this test.  I wonder why God allowed Jesus to be put through the test we read about in Matthew, too.  After all, we the purpose of tests is so we can prove to the teacher that we know the material, right?  It’s so we can prove that we’re qualified to move on.  In this case, though, the “teacher”, so to speak, is God.  God, by definition, knows everything and can see into our hearts.  If that’s true, then God would’ve had no reason to test Abraham, and certainly would’ve had no reason to test Jesus.  God already knew they could pass the test.  So what was the point of making them go through this?

            As I thought about that, it struck me that there’s another reason we take tests.  It’s not just to prove to the teacher that we know the material and can move on.  It’s also so we can prove those things to ourselves.

            I mentioned taking the bar exam.  It turned out that not only did I pass the bar exam, I did extremely well on it.  You know what that did for me?  It gave me a lot of confidence.  My score on the bar exam did not just prove to the bar that I was qualified to be a lawyer.  It proved to me that I was qualified to be a lawyer.  It proved to me that I had the knowledge and the skill and the ability to actually be good at the thing that, at that time, I wanted to do with my life.  When I got my score the bar exam, I felt like not only could I become a lawyer, but that I could actually succeed at being one.

            I think that’s why God tested Abraham.  Maybe it’s not the whole reason, but I think it was at least part of it.  God wanted Abraham to know that he was worthy of being the father of the nation of Israel, and that he could succeed at doing it.  I think that’s at least part of why God tested Jesus.  God wanted Jesus, in his human form, to know that he was worthy, that he could withstand all the pain and suffering and temptation he was going to have to face, and that he really could succeed at doing what he’d been sent to earth to do.

            That’s why God tests us sometimes, too; so we’ll know that God thinks we’re worthy of God’s love.  Now, let me be clear about one thing.  I am not saying that every time something bad happens, it’s because God is testing us.  I don’t believe that to be true.  Bad things happen to us for a lot of reasons.  Sometimes it’s our own fault, sometimes we suffer because of the actions of others, and sometimes things just seem to happen and we don’t have any idea why.  I do not want anyone to leave here with the idea that I think God causes all the bad things in the world, because I don’t think that at all.

            I do think, though, that there are times when God does test us.  We may not know it at the time.  It may be that, just like Abraham, we only find out that it was a test after it’s over.  We may not understand why things are happening the way they are, just like Abraham did not understand why God was asking him to do the things he was asked to do.  Still, God asks us to be faithful, even when we don’t understand what’s going on or why.

            God does that because God knows that our faith gets stronger when it’s tested.  If our faith is never tested, then we don’t really know how strong it is.  A faith that’s never been tested is like a bridge that’s never been tested.  We think it’s strong enough to hold us and to keep us out of danger, but how do we know?  We don’t.  Once it gets tested, though, then we know it’s strong enough.  That’s how it works with our faith, too.  Once our faith is tested, we know it’s strong enough.  Then, we can step out confidently, knowing that our faith is strong enough to carry us through whatever life can throw at us.

            We all go through times in our lives where our faith is tested.  They’re not easy.  Abraham’s time of testing was not easy.  Neither was Jesus’.  Tests are not intended to be easy.  When we pass them, though, we know we have what it takes to follow God anywhere God leads us to go, and to do anything God asks us to do.

Resisting the Good

            Remember last fall, when somebody predicted we were going to get two hundred inches of snow this winter?

            I don’t remember who made the prediction, but it got a lot of publicity.  I never believed it—two hundred inches of snow would be almost a foot a week every week of the winter—but a lot of people did.  Even people who did not believe that forecast thought we were going to have a bad winter.  I lost count of the number of people who told me that this winter was going to be at least as bad as last winter, if not worse.

            Well, winter’s not over yet, and there’s plenty of time for us to have some snowstorms.  It’s obvious, though, that we’re not going to get two hundred inches of snow.  It’s also obvious that this winter will be nowhere near as bad as last winter.  Even if we get a few snowstorms, spring is only a couple of months away.  All those predictions of gloom and doom were totally wrong.  Yet, a lot of people believed them.

            Why is that?  Why are we so eager to believe the worst, rather than the best?  And why are we so eager to try to convince others of it?

            There seems to be something inside of a lot of us that wants to believe the worst, whether it’s about the weather, about the economy, or about other people.  This is a presidential election year, of course.  Every election year, people complain about the number of negative ads that are run, in which a candidate does not tell us positive things about himself or herself, but tells us negative things about their opponents.  We complain about those ads, but we also believe them.  The reason negative ads are run is because they’re effective.  For some reason, we tend to believe the worst, so when we’re told something bad, it sticks with us.

            We also, sometimes, tend to believe the worst about ourselves.  None of us is perfect, of course.  We all have our faults and our failings.  Sometimes, though, we come to define ourselves by those faults and failings.  We forget all the positive things about ourselves, and focus on all the bad stuff in our lives.

            I wonder if that might be one of the reasons people sometimes have trouble believing in Jesus as their savior.  We refer to the gospel as the good news, but maybe, for some people, that news is so good that they can’t believe it.  We can’t believe that the divine, all-powerful, almighty, everlasting God would love us or care about us as individuals.  It doesn’t seem possible that the divine Son would actually give his life to save us.  We can believe that God would punish us for the bad things we’ve done, but that God would actually love each one of us as an individual and forgive each one of us for our sins, no matter what they are, that just doesn’t seem possible.

            I can’t think of anything I can say that will convince people that this good news is actually true, any more than I was able to convince people last fall that we wouldn’t get two hundred inches of snow this winter.  I don’t think this is a case where logical arguments are persuasive, at least not at first.  I think the way to convince people who can’t believe in the good news is to love them, to show them we love them, and to keep loving them no matter what they do or say.

I don’t mean to imply that this will always be easy.  It takes a lot of faith, a lot of hope, and a lot of perseverance to love people sometimes.  People sometimes resist our love.  People sometimes reject our love.  People sometimes test our love, to see if it’s real.  When people have believed the worst all their lives, it can be very difficult for them to believe that something good could actually happen to them whether they deserve it or not.

            It’s difficult, but not impossible.  If we love long enough and hard enough and consistently enough, we can ultimately break down people’s resistance.  It won’t be easy, and it will take time, but it can happen.

            God loves each of us, no matter who we are and no matter what we’ve done.  The least we can do in return is to love others, even when those others make it hard for us.