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125th Anniversary Lenten Retreat

 

An Encounter with the God Who Cares I

 

There are people, who when they experience difficulties in their lives, begin to believe that God does not care about them, or at worst, is against them.  Often they have no idea why the God whom they have heard loves his children, has turned his back on them or is actually punishing them for no good reason.  They might begin to examine their lives to see what dark, secret sins might be there.  If they find nothing which is proportionate to the suffering they are enduring, then the belief can grow that God does not love and that God does not care.

 

Jesus himself has a moment of anguish, when hanging from the Cross, he cries out, ”My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”  Sometimes we interpret that as simply a quote from Psalm 22:1.  But in his very human heart, Jesus must have experienced that moment of wondering whether the Father whom he loved and had prayed to all his life had now forgotten him.  Impossible?  Not if he was truly human as well as divine as the Church teaches.  There are certain feelings, certain thoughts which fill out minds in times of great distress.  That does not mean we consent to them, but even great Saints expressed these thoughts and feelings as a prayer of complaint to God.  Notice the prayer poem of the English Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins:

 

                        THOU art indeed just, Lord, if I contend

                       With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.

                       Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must

                        Disappointment all I endeavor end?

 

                        Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,

                        How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost

                        Defeat, thwart me?

 

Here the poet feels oppressed by God, punished by God and he just doesn’t understand since later he says:

 

(Evil things) Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,

Sir, life upon thy cause.

 

This is a faithful religious trying to do his best to serve God, but he is terribly frustrated and discouraged because he seems not to succeed at his work.

 

There is a great mystery about our brokenness, our suffering, and the bad things which happen to good people.  Theologically, we say it has to do with original sin.  Spiritual writers would ascribe it more to the fact that we are creatures with limitations.  Ascetics, like Gerard Manley Hopkins, would say it is God’s way of testing us.  The fact is that we are dealing with a great mystery which has to do with our own identity as human beings.

 

Now, we tend to want to blame God for all of our distresses, for our failures, for our traumas.  But perhaps the only real accusation we can level against God is that God did not make us Angels.  But then, if we believe scripture, some of  the angels had their own serious problems!

 

What we do learn from scripture is that God is always concerned about us, that God does not abandon us, that God wants to intervene to draw us out of the pit.  Look what God says to Moses: “I have witnessed the affliction of my people and have heard their cry of complaint against their slave drivers.” (Ex. 3:7).  Psalm 139 describes God as caring about us from our conception:  “You have formed my inmost being: you knit me in my mother’s womb.”  And in  Isaiah 49 God through the voice of the prophet says: “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb?  Even should she forget, I will never forget you.”

 

But then we might ask:  why then doesn’t God fix things for us? 

 

This can be a burning question.  What we should notice in scripture is that God rarely intervenes directly, God  is always through other human beings:  God calls Joseph to find food for his people who are in danger of starving; God calls Moses to lead the slaves to freedom; God calls David to free the people from the dangers of their enemies; God calls Jesus to lead God’s children to internal freedom and to show them the way, not just to a more abundant life on this earth but to eternal life.

 

We humans cannot always solve problems for one another, but we can and do comfort and accompany one another and help as much as we can.  Let’s notice that our call to help now comes from the Risen Lord Jesus, who during his time on earth said:

 

                    Then the king will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my             Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
                    For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a             stranger and you welcomed me,  naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for             me, in prison and you visited             me.' Matthew 25:34-3

God does not abandon his children, God continues to call people like ourselves to help, to rescue, to care for, to show love for those God cared for from their conception.  If we look back in our own life history, we will find that in the hard times, God has always sent someone to show us the way, sometimes even someone we don’t especially like. 

God’s love is unconditional.  God is faithful to his word.  God never abandons his people.

 

 

Now please think about the following question for just five minutes, then I’ll ask you to share your thoughts with one another.

 

Question: How do I, in my own mind and heart, reconcile the hard moments of life when God seems absent or even hostile to me, with my belief that God loves me unconditionally and has done so throughout my whole life?

 

 

Lenten Retreat: An Encounter with the God Who Cares II

 

Let’s start with a story from Scripture:

 

Numbers 11:2-15
2 But when the people cried out to Moses.   4 The foreign elements among them were so greedy for meat that even the Israelites lamented again, "Would that we had meat for food!
5 We remember the fish we used to eat without cost in Egypt, and the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic.
6 But now we are famished; we see nothing before us but this manna."
7 Manna was like coriander seed and had the appearance of bdellium.
8 When they had gone about and gathered it up, the people would grind it between millstones or pound it in a mortar, then cook it in a pot and make it into loaves, which tasted like cakes made with oil.
9 At night, when the dew fell upon the camp, the manna also fell.
10 When Moses heard the people, family after family, crying at the entrance of their tents, he was grieved.
11 "Why do you treat your servant so badly?" Moses asked the LORD. "Why are you so displeased with me that you burden me with all this people?
12 Was it I who conceived all this people? or was it I who gave them birth, that you tell me to carry them at my bosom, like a foster father carrying an infant, to the land you have promised under oath to their fathers?
13 Where can I get meat to give to all this people? For they are crying to me, 'Give us meat for our food.'
14 I cannot carry all this people by myself, for they are too heavy for me.
15 If this is the way you will deal with me, then please do me the favor of killing me at once, so that I need no longer face this distress."

Wow!  The great holy Moses is asking God to kill him so he no longer has to feel the distress of caring for the people, a people who are rebellious and ungrateful.

 

There are people, who when they experience difficulties in their lives, begin to believe that God does not care about them, or at worst, is against them.  Often they have no idea why the God whom they have heard loves his children, has turned his back on them or is actually punishing them for no good reason.  They might begin to examine their lives to see what dark, secret sins might be there.  If they find nothing which is proportionate to the suffering they are enduring, then the belief can grow that God does not love and that God does not care.

 

 

But God does care about us.  We should see how God responds to Moses.  So did God send anyone to help Moses in his distress?  Believe it or not, it was his father in law. 

 

Exodus 18:14-22 (NAB)
14 When his father-in-law saw all that he was doing for the people, he inquired, "What sort of thing is this that you are doing for the people? Why do you sit alone while all the people have to stand about you from morning till evening?"
15 Moses answered his father-in-law, "The people come to me to consult God.
16 Whenever they have a disagreement, they come to me to have me settle the matter between them and make known to them God's decisions and regulations."
17 "You are not acting wisely," his father-in-law replied.
18 "You will surely wear yourself out, and not only yourself but also these people with you. The task is too heavy for you; you cannot do it alone.
19 Now, listen to me, and I will give you some advice, that God may be with you. Act as the people's representative before God, bringing to him whatever they have to say.
20 Enlighten them in regard to the decisions and regulations, showing them how they are to live and what they are to do.
21 But you should also look among all the people for able and God-fearing men, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain, and set them as officers over groups of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens.
22 Let these men render decisions for the people in all ordinary cases. More important cases they should refer to you, but all the lesser cases they can settle themselves. Thus, your burden will be lightened, since they will bear it with you.

What we should notice in scripture is that God never intervenes directly, it is always through other human beings:  God calls Joseph to find food for his brothers who had sold him into slavery and unknowingly come to Egypt looking for food for their families. Jacob, the beloved of God was in distress and God sends his son Joseph to help.  There is going to be a flood, perhaps because of climate change, which can wipe out most living things.  God sends Noah.   The tribes of Israel found food in Egypt but in time the Egyptians became afraid of them and enslaved them.  God calls Moses to lead the slaves to freedom.  Humankind has gotten caught in the satanic trap of hate, violence, greed, abuse, debauchery, fear, and rejection of others, so God calls on his very Son to come lead us out of internal slavery to interior freedom, from destructive relationships to loving ones, from hard-heartedness, to kindness and charitableness.

 

 What we do learn from scripture is that God is always concerned about us, that God does not abandon us, that God wants to intervene to draw us out of the pit.  Look what God says to Moses: “I have witnessed the affliction of my people and have heard their cry of complaint against their slave drivers.” (Ex. 3:7).  Psalm 139 describes God as caring about us from our conception:  “You have formed my inmost being: you knit me in my mother’s womb.”  And in  Isaiah 49 God through the voice of the prophet says: “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb?  Even should she forget, I will never forget you.”

 

Let’s notice that our call to help now comes from the Risen Lord Jesus, who during his time on earth said:

 

                    Then the king will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me,  naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.' Matthew 25:34-3

God does not abandon his children, God continues to call people like ourselves to help, to rescue, to care for, to show love for those God has cared for from their conception.  If we look back in our own life history, we will find that in the hard times, God has always sent someone to show us the way, sometimes even someone we don’t especially like. 

God’s love is unconditional.  God is faithful to his word.  God never abandons his people.

 

 

Now please think about the following question for just five minutes, then I’ll ask you to share your thoughts with one another.

 

Question: Can I think back to some time when I or my family was experiencing difficulties and can I pinpoint someone whom God sent into my or our lives?