Boston

A marathon effects more than the city it’s in. My friend Kohon mentioned this marathon effected more people and countries then anyone can imagine. Boston has a strict time guideline in order to qualify for the race, some marathoners spend their whole lives trying to qualify for one of the races on their Bucket List. People from all over the United States and the world come to Boston.

Before two reconstructive knee surgeries, I had the goal of running the Boston (Boston is the one of the only marathons that require a qualifying time, I could not make the time cut yet). My time for the marathon was about the time the explosion went off. Long past my marathons days as I look at this tragedy as a minister of Jesus and see the hurt that people post from this. It’s a sad state and often people ask why would a loving God allow this to happen?

Throughout my time as a minister you see a lot of bad things happen to people. Sometimes it’s when people are already down and something worse happens. Haven’t they been punished enough? Then a tragedy like the Marathon happens and people without understanding call out to God, why God why? To answer this I am going to spend the rest of the time talking about suffering and choice.

We all have a choice. There is something called the free will defense that people a lot smarter then I came up with to explain when bad things happen. The free will defense is this…

1.      God is absolutely perfect.

2.      God created only perfect creatures.

3.      One of the perfections God gave some of his creatures was the power of free choice.

4.      Some of these creatures freely choose to do evil.

5.      Therefore, a perfect creature caused evil.

Every day we have the choice to do good or bad. Which do you choose? Today do you choose to go to work/school or the bar/or skip? It’s a choice an individual makes that can affect other people. We make thousands of choices every day that directly affect us and the people around us some directly and some indirectly. The people that chose to do this in Boston, chose to do evil. Their choice affected people all over the world for this international event.

Even with free will, why do people have to suffer? This is a tough question that you can look at with other questions. If God stopped all evil right now what would that look like? If God destroyed everything that caused unjust suffering and evil – what would survive? We can all do evil and that is where we struggle with sin. Suffering might cause us to be protected from an even deeper evil.

Not all suffering can be bad or evil, it can be pain. Sometimes in life we have to suffer to experience something great. I haven’t met a women who has cherished child birth but you love the result when you get that awesome gift of God in your hands. You sometimes have to suffer and endure hardships to get where you want to go in life (School, strict training, unpaid internship etc).

This doesn’t explain the event in Boston but hopefully you would understand a loving God does not want tragedies like this to happen in the world he created. While things like this do happen, sadly. God gave us Jesus to comfort us during these tough times. God is a loving and just God who cares about the people and I am sure is sad over this tragic event.

Through our lives we have a loving God who sacrificed his only son Jesus for us. Jesus took all of our sins and died for us. Through the bad things in life Jesus loves you cares for you and is sad when you are down. Through the suffering Jesus is always there with you. You can always go to him with your problems.

Wrap that sausage in bacon

My heart hurts. A phrase echoed from young Bart Simpson as Homer tells him he will do things his way. Then he repeats the phrase, "Wrap that sausage in bacon." Bart complies, a tough life lesson. Sometimes our heart aches physically other times mentally. We all have times when we are hurt.

What's a lesson and what's true pain? One of the worst things I have heard people say at a funeral or in a bad situation is God put you through this for a reason. Really? Bold statement to say, often the people that say this have little to no faith at all. They have no way to explain the situation that just happened.  Somebody or a group of people are hurting and this is the best you could come up with? Ouch.

God is so much more then a kid with a magnifying glass and we are the ants. This used to be God from the Old Testament (Romans 9:18)...
"Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden."
Life changed with Jesus. God is not the same God that showed this in the Old Testament. He is love and gave us Jesus. We will still go through rough times, sometimes we bring this on ourselves and other times it's unexpected. Through it all God is still God.

God is full of grace. Through the wrong we have done and the tough times we face, God gives us grace. When we don't understand the bad that is going on in our lives, God gives us comfort and someone to always rely on. Through the bad you are going through right now, remember God loves you, he cares so much for you he gave is only son to die on the cross for you. That is how special you are to God. You are made in his image.

Life is sometimes hard. Our hearts are harden and damaged at times. Yet God can make the harden in our hearts go away when we trust in him. It might not be the case if you always wrap sausage in bacon, that could be tough to swallow. God loves you and gives you grace that we don't always see or feel but it's completely real. When you move closer to God he will move closer to you.

Have a great day.

God meant for the Connecticut tragedy to happen

Bad things happen in the world. This doesn’t mean that it comes from God (I don’t think God meant for this to happen).  People at times have the worst things to say to hurting people, there was an article I read from Emily C. Heath Dealing with Grief: Five things NOT to say and five things to say in a Trauma involving children that does a great job with this.  She was a Chaplain in the emergency department of a children’s hospital with a level one trauma center.

 

This comes directly from her article, she can say it way better than I could

 

Here are five things NOT to say to grieving family and friends:

 

1.      "God just needed another angel." – Portraying God as someone who arbitrarily kills

kids to fill celestial openings is neither faithful to God, nor helpful to grieving parents.

 

2.      "Thank goodness you have other children," or, "You're young. You can have more kids."

Children are not interchangeable or replaceable. The loss of a child will always be a loss, no matter how many other children a parent has or will have.

 

3.      He/she was just on loan to you from God – The message is that God is so capricious that

God will break parents' hearts at will just because God can. It also communicates to parents and loved ones that they are not really entitled to their grief.

 

4.      God doesn't give you more than you can handle – Actually, some people do get a lot

more than any one person should ever have to handle. And it doesn't come from God. Don't trivialize someone's grief with a "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" mentality.

 

5.      We may not understand it, but this was God's will – Unless you are God, don't use this

line.

 

Here are five things to say:

1.      I don't believe God wanted this or willed it – A grieving friend or family member is likely

hearing that this is God's will from a number of other people. Affirm the idea that it may very well not be.

 

2.      It's okay to be angry, and I'm a safe person for you express that anger to if you need it –

Anger is an essential part of the grieving process, but many don't know where to talk about it because they are often silenced by others when they express their feelings. (For instance, they may be told they have no right to be angry at God.) By saying you are a safe person to share all feelings, including anger, with, you help the grieving person know where they can turn.

 

3.      It's not okay –                                                 It seems so obvious, but sometimes this

doesn't get said. Sometimes the pieces don't fit. Sometimes nothing works out right. And sometimes there is no way to fix it. Naming it can be helpful for some because it lets them know you won't sugarcoat their grief.

 

4.      I don't know why this happened –                 When trauma happens, the shock and

emotion comes first. But not long after comes our human need to try to explain "why?" The reality is that often we cannot. The grieving person will likely have heard a lot of theories about why a trauma occurred. Sometimes it's best not to add to the chorus, but to just acknowledge what you do not know.

 

5.      I can't imagine what you are going through, but I am here to support you in whatever way feels best –                                                     Even if you have faced a similar loss,

remember that each loss is different. Saying "I know how you're feeling" is often untrue. Instead, ask how the grieving person is feeling. And then ask what you can do to help. Then, do it and respect the boundaries around what they don't want help with at this point. You will be putting some control back into the hands of the grieving person, who often feels like they have lost so much of it.

 

If I could add one more, it would be the person that says, “You might wonder why would God allows this to happen….Well, God's not allowed in schools.” I just heard someone say this at a public event with about 100 people around them.  This is awful and bad theology.  We are still protected by free speech and have the right to be Christian, Muslim, Jewish or Hindu in a public school.

 

My heart aches for this school tragedy.  I am continuing to pray for this school and the families. 

 

Have a great day.