Monthly Archives: March 2012

God’s Cooperation

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Although I’ve been back in Michigan for a week now, a piece of my heart stayed behind with my Florida grandchildren. What they said and did will be on my mind for quite a while. For example, one day I was complimenting Skylar on a stick figure she’d drawn when she said, “Both of his legs are broken, Midgee.”

“Oh dear,” I said.

“But they’re fixed now,” she said.

“Oh, that’s good,” I said. “So, he went to the hospital?”

“Oh no! Jesus fixed ‘em. Jesus fixes everything.”

It’s wonderful that Skylar credits Jesus with being the Great Fixer of all things, but from an adult perspective we might think, “Does he really fix everything? Not in my experience. My spouse is ill. Or my job was eliminated, my teen is rebelling, my 401K is shrinking, my parents are infirm.”

Since Skylar and I were already into a theological discussion, I asked for her opinion on that dilemma.  “What if the man’s legs stayed broken? What if Jesus decided not to fix them?”

Without even looking up from her crayon work, she shrugged and said, “Well, he would just fix ’em later.”

I’ve thought about that statement since being home and whether or not adults can trust Jesus to come through as readily as Skylar does. But of course there’s one big problem she didn’t address: the lame man’s point of view.

If a lame man’s legs don’t get healed when he expects they will, how is he supposed to cope during that frustrating time between no-not-now and for-sure-later? What if that period spans his whole life and healing doesn’t occur until heaven? How can he handle it?

Although broken legs do eventually mend, we’ve all known people who became ill and stayed that way for many years, despite our intense prayers for healing. Some have even prayed for God to let them die. Why does God often allow people to suffer long-term like that? What benefit could there be? If he’s not going to heal them on this earth, then why not pluck them from their agony sooner rather than later?

Here are 4 possibilities:

  • Soul-work might need to occur. Putting people in hospital beds is an effective way to arrest their attention and get the work done.
  • God might want to teach a person to graciously accept charity, uncomfortable for most of us since it involves a self-humbling process.
  • Maybe he wants to develop an attitude of servanthood in healthy people toward those who are ailing, giving them an opportunity to help for the long haul.
  • And of course those who are sick can teach the rest of us a great deal about how to manage suffering, by their example.

When God answers our prayers for healing with “no” or “maybe later,” just like Skylar we should remain confident he’ll say “yes” eventually, even if, as she says, it’s much later. But while we wait, we can be certain God is delaying for some very compelling reasons.

“Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, ‘Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.’” (Mark 9:35)

Door to Nowhere

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When my 74 year old cottage got new windows a year ago, we came around to the back of the house and decided to substitute a door for one of the windows. It seemed crazy, since there was nothing but thin air on the other side, no porch, stairway or other surface for feet to stand on, but we hoped one day to build a deck there.

If anyone were to sleepwalk through that door, they’d either wake up during their rapid descent or go unconscious when they hit the concrete 12 feet below. For now, though, we’re careful to keep the door closed and double-locked.

Nobody likes to have doors closed against them. Our kids, grandkids and even Jack have fervently wanted to open that door to nowhere and walk through it. I guess we all view an open door as a symbol of opportunity. To walk through it is to have an adventure.

Open doors are usually a good thing, like when a friend opens her home and invites us to “C’mon in!” Some churches even use the open door image as part of their name, The Church of the Open Door, hoping friends and strangers alike will all “C’mon in.”

Although we like doors to be open, sometimes walking through them leads us to places we don’t want to go – a dentist’s office, a hospital, a funeral home. But even then we walk through, knowing that what’s on the other side is important.

Some open doors have eternal significance. Jesus labeled himself “The Door” to eternal security. (John 10:9) He was trying to give his listeners a word picture of the most crucial door they could ever open, making sure they understood that he was the way through to heaven. He also told them a knock on that door would cause it to open up, and he invited everyone to knock. (Matthew 7:7)

My favorite scriptural door, though, is the one mentioned toward the end of the Bible. God describes a door with the Lord on one side and us on the other. This time he’s the one knocking, and we’re the ones deciding whether or not to open up. He’s also using his voice to get our attention, hoping we’ll hear and open up. Incredibly he says that if we do, he’ll enter our lives. Not only that, but he promises to share a close relationship with us much like sharing a meal with those we love, in intimate fellowship.

Why does he have an interest in coming to us at all? When I’ve asked him, his answer has always been the same:

“Because I love you.”

So, unlike my cottage door to nowhere that’s closed and double-locked, I’ve swung wide the door to my life, and Jesus has come in.

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” (Revelation 3:20)

Longing to Help

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Children love to do whatever we’re doing. They see it as helping. We see it as extra work for us. Once in a while, though, we need to make time for them to try.

Recently Skylar saw me spreading peanut butter on a rice cake and pleaded to do the same. I tried to hand her the one I’d already fixed, but she wanted to make it herself. Since grandmas love to say yes, I plunked her on the counter and gave her a knife, the PB, and a rice cake. Although she eventually got it done, her effort was clumsy at best.

When children try to do what we do, they approach the project feeling capable of accomplishing adult work with adult tools and getting adult results. In their minds, they bring sophisticated competence to every task and could take the place of any one of us.

God describes a spiritual parallel much like this. We come to him to “get saved” and he saves us. Then we promptly begin a program to “save ourselves,” after the fact, trying to earn our salvation. It makes no sense but is as common as children believing they’re as skilled as adults. In terms of our relationship with God, we’re as unable to help him as a young child is to help us.

Does God see our behavior the way I saw Skylar’s? He says, “I’ve done it already and am trying to hand you the finished product.” But we want to do it ourselves, just as Skylar did. From his perspective, our assistance toward getting saved is but a clumsy mishandling of the perfect gift he wants to give us.

As I watched Skylar’s small hands struggle to manipulate her adult-sized knife, I knew she was in a learning process. Experience was teaching her, and she would do a little bit better next time. But in the case of our salvation, no amount of trying, even with better and better effort, can get the job done. God has seen to it that everything’s already been done, through the death of his Son.

To put ourselves in the role of assistant to the Almighty is improper and, from his perspective, laughable. Of course in reality, there’s nothing funny about trying to make ourselves good enough for God. Actually, it’s the opposite of funny. It’s a serious mistake.

When Nate and I were raising our family and the children misbehaved, he would snap his fingers to get their attention and say, “Act right.” It’s a good command, and it’s something God is hoping all of us will do, all the time. But applying right deeds as credit toward salvation is like asking Skylar to spread PB on 500 rice cakes in 5 seconds. It can’t be done.

“At just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” (Romans 5:6)