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07.20.08

17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

IN ALL THINGS GOD

PSALM 90; ROMANS 8:26-39

• The Faith of a Child
• Children’s Letters to God
• “Dear God: Why isn’t Mrs. God’s name in the Bible?  Weren’t you married to her when you wrote it?”
• Dear God: Why did you make people talk foreign languages?  It would be easier if everybody could talk English like you and me.”
• “Dear God: If you made the sun and the moon and the stars you must have had lots of equipment.”
• “Dear God: How come you only have 10 rules and our school has millions?”
• “Dear God: When you made the first man did he work as good as we do now?”
• “Dear God: There were no clouds Saturday so I think I saw your feet.  Did I really?”
• “Dear God: I know there’s a God because I go to His house on Sunday and see all the cars parked there.”
• Dear God: Where does yesterday go?  Do you have it?”
• “Dear God: I’m afraid of things at night more than in the day.  So if you could keep the sun on longer that would be a good thing.”
• Perhaps you’ve heard these before or heard some other version of them
• These questions are part of a collection known as Children’s Letters to God
• They’re cute and often comical, yet they profess the profound sense of faith and trust in God that children often have
• Is it any wonder that Jesus openly welcomed children to his side and invited them to sit on his lap?
• Is it any wonder that he used them as examples of faithfulness for adults who were struggling to find God amidst the difficult circumstances of their lives?
• Is it any wonder that Jesus says to us who are adults that we need to become like children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven?
• A Faith, Simple Yet Profound
• My grandfather died when I was four years old
• My grandmother died in March of 1954, thirteen months before I was born, and from that time on, my grandfather lived with us until the day he died
• My mother and I were the only ones home the day Grandpap died
• Dad was at work, my brothers were in school, and my sister wouldn’t be born for three more months
• Grandpap was sick the day before and spent most of the day in bed
• Mom and I had just finished breakfast when she went upstairs to check on him
• What she found was that he had died through the night, apparently as the result of a stroke
• I remember standing on the couch in the living room next to my mother as she sat there crying
• The sliding doors between the living room and the hall had been drawn closed as the undertaker brought Grandpap’s body down from his bedroom
• But those doors never closed tightly, so through the gap I could see the men as they brought his body down, all wrapped tightly in a white sheet
• As they took his body out of the house, I put my arms around Mom and said, “Don’t worry, Mommy.  Grandpap will be all right.”
• The next day, we went to the funeral home for visitation
• As we walked in, I looked to the front of that big room and saw my grandfather lying in the casket
• I turned to my mother and said, “See, Mommy, I told you Grandpap would be all right.  They put him in a big suitcase.”
• This was my first experience with death
• While I obviously didn’t understand everything that was going on, somehow I knew my grandfather would be OK
• I equated that casket with a suitcase, and at age four, a suitcase to me meant only one thing—vacation—and vacations were fun
• In my young mind, my grandfather was going on a trip, and I knew he would be OK and that he’d have a good time
• Something happens during the passage of years that causes us to lose that childlike faith and trust
• As a child, we’re always in a hurry to grow up, and once we’ve grown up, we yearn to be a child again
• I don’t know what it is through the course of our years that causes us to become cynical, to lose the sense of wonder and mystery of life, or to question the reality of God and abandon our faith and trust in him
• Perhaps it’s something different for each of us because the circumstances of our life are so different
• Whatever it is, it makes faith much more difficult for us as adults than it was when we were children
• It’s this ease and simplicity of faith children have that Jesus lifts up as an example for adults
• Rediscovering the Presence of God
• The Struggle of Faith
• Paul addresses this struggle of faith in the opening words of our passage from Romans 8
• Sometimes we’re so overwhelmed by the difficulties we face in life that we don’t even know what to pray for
• We become frustrated because our prayers don’t seem to be effective
• When we don’t get the answers we’re seeking, we question whether God is really listening, whether God really cares about what we’re going through, or even if there really is a God at all
• And a faith that’s already shaken by difficult circumstances often become weakened that much more when it seem to us that we’ve been beating our fists on the door of heaven and there’s no one home to answer
• Yet, even in circumstance like that, Paul encourages us not to lose heart
• When we’ve reached the end of our hope and we don’t even know what to pray for, God still knows what we need and God still cares about our circumstances
• When we reach the place where words can can’t even form on our lips any longer, the Holy Spirit intercedes with God for us “with groans that words cannot express”
• And God, who searches our hearts, knows exactly what it is we need, even when we’ve lost all capacity to tell him!
• What greater proof do we need that God loves us and that God will never abandon us?
• Why do we still find faith and trust so difficult?
• In the confidence of God’s surpassing knowledge and abounding love and grace, Paul moves on to make a profound declaration of faith: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (v. 28)
• What greater profession of faith is there, then, than those four words “In all things God’?
• In the King James Version of the Bible, this verse says, “All things work together for God for those who love God,” yet this version is a mistranslation of the original Greek language
• Paul isn’t saying that everything will work itself out if we love God, implying that if we love God, everything will somehow magically be OK
• The point Paul is making here is that because God love us, God will work to bring good into our lives out of every bad situation
• We are not bound by circumstances, we are bound to the love of God, so we don’t have to wait to see if circumstances work themselves out because we have a God who loves us, who is present with us in those circumstances, and who is already working to bring good into our lives no matter how bad the circumstances may be
• Where Is God In All of This?
• The problem for us as adults is that we don’t see God “in all things”
• The evidence of that is the fact that, too often, we are too busy asking “Where is God in all of this?” believing that God is absent, and not busy enough looking to find God in the midst of the trouble we’re experiencing
• Perhaps that’s what we’ve lost from our childhood—the ability to “see God”
• What child has never run into the house with a fistful of dandelions believing that she/he has just picked the most beautiful bouquet of flowers for their mother?
• We don’t see them as a beautiful part of God’s creation—we see them as just weeds
• Even in the face of tragic loss, children tend to be much more resilient than we are as adults because they believe that the world is basically good, that love is stronger than hate, and that there’s a Power greater than themselves who can make sense of things even when things make no sense to them at all
• How different the world be for us, and for everyone else on this planet, if we could learn to see God “in all things,” if we could say the words “In all things God” and truly believe them!
• But we’re too much in the habit of looking for bad things, we’re too much in the habit of looking at the circumstances rather than looking beyond the circumstances to see the hand of God at work
• We’re too busy trying to rationalize everything, trying to understand why certain things happen to us
• We’re too busy looking for answers to realize that we’re not going to find all the answers
• While our knowledge is great, surpassing the knowledge of every other creature on this earth, our knowledge is still limited—we don’t have the capacity to know and understand everything
• But God does!
• So doesn’t it make sense that when we’re not able to make sense of everything that happens to us to trust ourselves to the only One who has the ability to make sense of everything?
• When there’s nothing more we can do to change a situation, the best thing we can do is to trust that situation to God, who alone has the power to do things we can’t, and let God handle it for us
• The point that Paul is making in this discussion is that in all things, God is on our side
• No matter how big a mess we make, God is still able to work to bring good into our lives simply because God loves us
• So Paul asks the question, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” and he goes on to answer that question by showing us the extent of God’s love
• God gave up his Son for us and allowed him to die and be raised to new life again
• If God can defeat the power of death and bring new life to the world through the resurrection of Jesus, God certainly has the power to bring good out of the difficult circumstances we face
• The only requirement is that we love him and trust him
• From Everlasting to Everlasting
• The 90th is the only Psalm in the Bible attributed to Moses, and Moses certainly had to face more than his fair share of difficulties in life
• Moses was the leader of the people of Israel during the most difficult time of their existence, and Moses alludes to the many hardships he and the people of Israel faced during that time
• But notice the words Moses uses to begin this psalm: he declares that God is our dwelling place in all generations, that before anything was created God was, in everything that happens in life God is, and at the end of time when all creation is swept away God will be
• This is the meaning of his words “From everlasting to everlasting you are God.”
• There’s not a moment in time where God is absent, there’s not a circumstance in life where God is not present, and even when life comes to an end, we will never be beyond the reach of God’s love
• In other words, we are born by the grace of God, we live in the grace of God, and when we die, it is by God’s grace that we gain eternal life
• There’s not a moment in life when God is absent
• In all things God.  Period
• Because of this belief, Paul is able to declare, “In all things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” (v. 37)
• Because of that, then, there is absolutely nothing—not even death itself—that’s able to separate us from God’s love, from experiencing the blessings God wants to give us, if we but trust him and look for the signs of his presence
• God’s love is like a magnet that keeps drawing us toward him, a magnet so strong that it penetrates anything that tries to get in its way
• A love that strong can never be broken
• In all things God
• That’s the difference between children and adults where faith is concerned
• Children tend to see God a lot more easily than we do