Do Miracles Still Happen?

Back in 2001, I was asked to speak to a group, a Bible Study about whether or not miracles happened. The resulting exegesis, quotes, etc., wound up many weeks later in sermon form. Below is that sermon, "Do Miracles Still Happen?" Please note - this is a whole Sermon, not just a blog. A little longer than normal. Also, please note that to get the most out of the entry, I suggest you say a prayer, asking God for illumination, understanding, and insight. And then you'll need to read from the New Testament, The Gospel of John, Chapter 9: 1 - 12. You'll see quickly it is a healing story, a miracle story, what The Gospel of John routinely calls a sign or a wonder. I make no claims in one sermon to answer this question in an "unabridged fashion." These were just the thoughts I had about the scripture, the text, and the question 7 years ago. If you agree or disagree, let me know. I do enjoy your feedback.

I am travelling today and will resume my regular blog entries next week. May God grant you Almighty Grace.

Do Miracles Still Happen?

John 9: 1 - 12

This is a question that has vexed and perplexed every person of faith – and, I am in some ways proud to report, will still challenge those of us who believe in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Picasso once said, “Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one’s bath like a lump of sugar.” And he’s right – we are created in a sturdy and resilient way. We don’t just dissolve, we cannot will our births, we do not get to determine the length or quality of our living, so yes, it’s a miracle that we alive and that we are the way we are.

Years earlier the playwright George Bernard Shaw, himself no champion of orthodox Christianity, wrote, “A miracle is an event which creates faith. That is the purpose and nature of miracles – for frauds only deceive. An event which creates faith does not deceive: therefore it is not a fraud, but a miracle.”

I begin with these two gentlemen’s remarks because they are, if you will, the intellectual response to this question – Do miracles happen? Of course they do, the argument answers, we are complex, we are miracles, and we believe – this itself is miraculous. I, for one, suppose that this is the predominant view of most of us, especially when so many around us are convinced that miracles are everywhere, everyday, and if the check book is big enough, accessible to most anyone.

In her most recent column in Newsweek magazine entitled “Leg Waxing and Life Everlasting” Anna Quindlen begins with these words – “My mother did not exfoliate. In her cabinet she had a big white jar of Pond’s and a blue jar of Noxema. That’s the care her face got. As for my grandmothers – one with skin like tissue paper the other with skin like leather – I imagine soap and water did the job. How surprised these women would be to discover the amount of maintenance the human face needs today – exfoliation, antioxidation, moisturizing, revitalizing and toning – Retinol , alphahydroxy acids, plant estrogens and herbal peels --- My shower and sink have begun to look like a salad bar.”

Miracle weight loss. Miracle skin products. Miracle hair growth products, Miracle hair removal items. Miracle financing which provide the miracles in quality of living in the midst of miracle development amenities. Miracle skin products. Please pardon me for mentioning it, but I believe there is even a rather expensive product called the Miracle Brassiere -- the miracle bra. Anna Quindlen is right – with the salad bar approach to miracle fixes, why do we need the miracle of life everlasting if we can technologically and chemically make this life last forever?

Our culture’s faith in these so called miracles is an illusion though – I know it, Anna Quindlen knows it, Jesus Christ knows it – these things, these miracles are not real. In what is the high point of her piece she suggests that Ponce de Leon himself looked for the miracle --- the fountain of youth -- and he found only Florida.

I don’t want Florida to be my miracle. I don’t want the salad bar. So, the question still remains after we have discounted the frauds, do miracles still happen? Did they ever really happen?

The biblical witness is clear with its attestation – miracles are real, they are important, and they are signs of God’s will, God’s grace, and God’s new kingdom breaking through to our world. All accounts of miracles, especially those of Jesus, begin with a person in some deep need, proceed with a healing of any variety of sorts, and end with witnesses confirming what had transpired.

Here in John’s 9th Chapter we find Jesus at his Earthiest – he makes mud that must be washed away in order for sight to be regained. We are not told why he makes this mud. We are not told why in other Gospels Jesus heals the blind by simply uttering a word, as he tells blind Bartimaeus in Mark’s gospel, “Go, your faith has made you well.” We are told very little, except that the man has not sinned, nor have his parents. Rather his blindness is but a means for the glory of God might be revealed in him and through him – God is, in other words, at work in this man and will be with this man born blind, regardless of the popular notion of the day that his blindness was proof that God had abandoned him. Jesus’ cure is at the least proof that God’s grace extends to those of whom it has been assumed that they have been forgotten. Miracles, as the foundation that has weathered the storms of 2000 years attest, did truly and actually happen.

The question remains as to whether or not they still happen today? Or better yet, do we even seek and are we even holding out hope for the right kinds of miracles?

This used to trouble me at Seminary – about to be ordained in a faith as a minister who was not sure that miracles happened. I sat one day with a man named Jim and asked him – Jim, I thought, believed more than I. “Christopher,” he said, “I have seen them. But before I could see them, I had to know where and when to look.” I got chills – it just seemed so mystical and so impossible.

And yet, Jim was no fool. Just like the people who flock to Lourdes France are no fools – in the 2 centuries that there has been a shrine to the Lady of Lourdes there have 20 – 30 confirmed miracles – investigated and proven interventions of God breaking through and breaking in to our world in phenomenal ways. And yet, with only 20 or so healings, why do the thousands each month, the millions each year flock there?

I saw a show last month on Lourdes, France and the phenomenon. A paraplegic from Scotland was interviewed – “No, I don’t expect to be healed, I’m not ‘en sure I want to be healed,” he said. “I have come here so many times because it is a reminder that God has not forgotten me, and that hope is a precious thing.”

That is in and of itself the most common of miracles – that people find faith in the midst of despair, recovery in the midst of addiction, wealth in the midst of poverty, blessings in the midst of pain. Miracles happen every day, but they are most often miracles of assistance rather than of reversals of creation. The Jacobs Ladder Job Center, through prayer and practical applications finds ex-convicts and the underemployed jobs and security that they have never had. The Charlotte Rescue Mission gives free alcohol and drug rehabilitation to homeless men just 6 blocks from here – 100 men and 90 days. The motto that hangs on the wall – “God has a miracle for you!” And He does, He does! For even though we often believed that we are forsaken, God is still present because Jesus is present and Jesus came out of that tomb as final proof – as a final sign – that God was breaking through the bonds of sin and death to show us a vision of his reign and his kingdom. The most important miracle of all is Christ, and that is the miracle that assumes us all.

Perhaps if we focused upon the reality of that miracle, our sight wouldn’t be so blurred by the fraudulent ones. Like The Miracle of Movie Magic that makes people suspend in the air in martial arts mastery. Or The Miracle of "youth in a bottle" – the miracle of a quick cure for an old wound. Medical miracles we routinely call them but aren’t they really the result of the greater miracles of educational access, decent and honest teachers at colleges and medical school, and doctors who are called to endure the requisite years of training? In each of the supposed miracles that we might work the true miracle is the untraceable tracks of friendship and teamwork and determination that are the foundation for the benefits that we might receive.

As for me, with the eyes of faith that God grants me I see miracles every day. Some bigger than others. I have also had prayers answered and seen people healed, souls renewed, and loves found. I have watched recoveries that defied all logic – teenagers beaten by the world tell me they loved evil and hurting others and then months later after hours of witness, counseling, and love give their lives to Christ and their works to cause of kindness and mercy.I have also been told no when I prayed for healings. So, I cannot predict miracles nor can I control them. Neither can any of us. But we have a Lord who performed them and promised them, and so, like the people of Lourdes we can wait, and we can attest to their reality, and we can know that God is with us – especially in our Christ. And in knowing we can hope, and by doing so, attest the surest miracle of all.

Thoughts on Preaching, Jeremiah Wright, and other Bloggy Thoughts

I am not preaching a sermon this week. It is Youth Sunday, which means that our Youth -- Junior High and High School -- will be leading the worship service.

As I am a preacher, preaching is nearly always on my mind. I usually walk around with a running commentary in my head, thinking about the scripture for the week, looking for illustrations in magazines and on television. By Wednesday or Thursday I am walking around with a notebook or a pad of paper, jotting down ideas and forming sentences. Depending on the health of my kids, whether or not I have a wedding or a funeral, I finish an outline of the sermon by Thursday afternoon or Friday morning. Then, I write my blog; and then, I complete the outline (I preach from outlines at least 70 % of the time now) or I compose my text, finishing Friday night, Saturday, or more often than I would like to admit, I finish early Sunday mornings.

Last month, John Buchanan, one of the most decorated preachers in our denomination wrote about the hazards of preaching and about the 'handshake ritual' that occurs after the sermon. At the heart of his essay was the question -- what does it mean if folks tell you "good sermon, Reverend?”

What if folks tell you "good job" and you, the preacher, know it wasn't very good at all?

What do folks really hear during a sermon? I listen to sermons, and sometimes my mind wonders, my thoughts drift, my tiredness catches up to me and my hearing and attention are compromised. So what do people really hear?

Even scarier -- will I be held accountable for everything I speak or say as a preacher?

I will never pastor an 8,000 member church like Jeremiah Wright (if you don't know who he is by now, just Google his name and hold on tight) and it is highly doubtful that I will ever be video taped or “YouTubed” like he is. But I did see one article this week that suggested that he had been speaking for 30 plus years and that his sermons accounted for more than 208,000 minutes and the sound bites we are seeing on TV account for something like .0000012 of his speaking time (see Christian Century, April 22, 2008, "The Rest of the Story" by David Moyer). Now, I am not pleased by what I hear on the sound bites. Not in the least. It hits me hard and I cannot imagine saying what he says on them about race, America, or history. Jeremiah Wright is the "hot-man" of the moment. His remarks bearing upon a Presidential race here in 2008. In one light I am glad that people and media are taking sermons and preaching so seriously that they are concerned about a preacher and his influence on a President. In another light though, I am led back to my question -- I wonder what will be remembered of me as a preacher? What do people hear and commit to memory? To read a fuller account of who Wright is and what he usually preaches / preached (he is retired now, technically), check this link out:

http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=4678

Now, it is risky to even write about him at all these days. I don't mean to endorse him or defend him or uphold what he said. I only mention him because he is relevant in this moment and because his situation emphasizes my larger question -- namely that there is a transaction between preacher and hearer, and it is a transaction that is brokered by the Holy Spirit, and it is a transaction which is influenced by external circumstances like those I list above.

Full disclaimer: I have heard him speak once, and it was to a Presbyterian audience, and what he said was appropriate to the occasion and theologically astute. It certainly was not about "damning America" or anything else that apparently he has said. I do wonder what I would have done had he broken into that kind of rhetoric -- and I wonder how often he used it in past years?

What do people actually hear when I am preaching? What will my preaching be remembered for? What would my sound bites sound like if they were taken out of context? It is an interesting and scary question for me. As for now, I am glad that I am a preacher of little acclaim.

Bloggy Thoughts about Health and Death:
Last week I blogged and preached about what ministry takes from you -- namely the illusions that you, as a person, will never get sick or never die. In doing the sermon prep I stumbled upon page 146 of Wendell Berry's fantastic "essay" Life is a Miracle. Want to have your thinking changed and your mind blessed by clear writing? Then read Wendell Berry. I commend him to you often in these blogs, I know. I have a friend that accuses me of having a "man-crush" on him, and that may be true.

Berry writes: "An idea of health that does not generously and gracefully accommodate the fact of death is obviously incomplete. The crudest manifestation of modern medicine is its routine, stubborn, and finally cruel resistance to death. This comes of the refusal to accept death not only as a part of health, which it demonstrably is, but also as a great mystery both in itself and as a part of the mystery that surrounds us all our lives. The medical industry’s resistance is only sometimes an instance of scientific heroism; sometimes it is the fear of what we don’t know anything about.
Science can teach us and help us to resist death, but it can’t teach us to prepare for death or to die well. The question of how you want to die is somewhat fantastical but nonetheless it is one that all the living need to consider, one that belongs to the issue of health, and one that health science can’t answer. Do you want to die at home with your people in ‘blessed peace around you,’ which is the death Tiresias foresaw for Odysseus and the one Homer seems to recommend? Or do you want to die in the hands of the best medical professionals wherever they are? Such questions may seem irrelevant until you realize that they define two very different lives.” (Life is a Miracle, Wendell Berry, page 146, CounterPoint Press, 2000)

I’ll be traveling in Louisiana next week. I’ll try to blog from there. God’s blessings to all of you.

The Strangeness of Suffering

• Searing pain.
  Loveless emptiness.
  Tightness in the chest.
  Walls closing in on me.
  “I don’t know what to do.”
  “So angry I could shake.”
  “It’s like dawn will never come.”
  “Learning process.”
  “A chance to grow.”
  “I don’t feel anything.”
  Darkness.
  Irony.
  Despair.

These are just some of the ways which I have heard suffering described over the last 13 years, since I started Seminary.

Just like most of us avoid talking about or thinking about death – most of us avoid talking about or thinking about suffering. Ministry takes many things away from you if you practice it as a vocation – the most obvious example being that you have to let go of the idea that there is anything “easy like Sunday morning” (sorry Lionel Richie). Another is the illusion that you will never grow old, never be sick, or never die. All these things will happen to me if I am so graced to live. There is no way to avoid them. They are the exchange for youth – it is Mother Nature’s Divinely given economy, and God’s lovely drama in which we are engaged to perform for a lifetime. Ministry also demands that we lose our fear of talking about suffering. When many people are running away, ministers are running into the fire of the miserable divorce, the crisis pregnancy, the sudden death, the cancer call, the lost business, the threatened child, the coldness of addiction…..you get the point.

Here’s what I have discovered: While the causes of suffering are totally relative and completely individual, the experience of said suffering is fairly (if not nearly) universal. We all grieve in certain patterns and in certain ways. We all struggle with failure in certain patterns and in certain ways. We all experience fear in certain patterns and in certain ways.

At the risk of theologizing, I’ll end that chain of thought there for now. This is a blog and not a book and to turn it tome-ishly into the latter would be a mistake. So to the point: do you think suffering is good, bad, or indifferent? Or, is it a combination of the three – our experience of it dependent upon the passage of time, the process of feeling, and the gaining of perspective?

Process this: history and experience witness to the circumstance that nothing has caused more people to lose faith, to question faith, than has suffering. “Why did my dad (mother, brother, etc.) have to suffer so terribly?” has cost more people a belief in divine goodness than anything else. And, history and experience have shown that suffering has brought more people to faith than anything else. The people whose faiths inspire me, who trust God the most and who have an envious spiritual depth to them are often those who have suffered the most. Not always, but often. Confused yet? Enjoying the paradox?

Ask this: have you learned more from success or failure? What was the most valuable job experience to you – the one you got the easy undeserved promotion at, or the one where you got fired, downsized, or let go from? How about that paradox?

Or this one: For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God's will, than to suffer for doing evil (1 Peter 3:17). The ethics aside – good is better than evil – the writer of 1 Peter thinks that suffering is a good thing. Maybe even necessary. Maybe even essential. Even better (or worse) – there seems to be an implied (if not overt) suggestion that it is honorable to suffer for doing the right thing. We struggle with suffering when we do wrong. Imagine not receiving a reward, but punishment, for doing what is right? That is so foreign to our way of thinking that it is strange for me to type – I imagine it is strange for you to read.

I’ll stop there. The number of books written on this topic – the pain, virtue, or idiomatic nature of suffering – would rival the stars. But I will stipulate this: the paradox of experience teaches us that the value of a good day, or of a joyful laugh, is directly related to, if not the reciprocal to, the darkness of the pain that we experience form time to time (C.S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain takes this on). Or – how do we know the good days from the bad if we don’t know enough about the bad to value the good? And, the paradox of faith teaches us that there is no Easter without Calvary – no forgiveness without sacrifice; no cheap grace.

So, is suffering good, bad, or indifferent? Is it ever purely one over the other? Or does time alone, after we have been through the storm, tell the tale?

Satisfaction?

“I can’t get no satisfaction” – so said the Rolling Stones decades ago. They were hardly the first to express this frustration, to ask whether or not the human mind, soul, or appetite is ever satiated, ever satisfied.

One of my favorite movies is 1997’s As Good As It Gets. If you saw it, you know it – Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, Greg Kinnear, Cuba Gooding, Jr., and a grand-slam ensemble cast. It is just a lovely film about complexity, the problems of adult life, and the anxieties that naturally happen to us if we are ‘normal’ (Helen Hunt) or if we are eccentric or even obsessive compulsive (Kinnear and Nicholson). The pivotal moment of the film, in my mind, occurs to Jack Nicholson, an obsessive compulsive best selling author. He is going to see his therapist / psychiatrist and realizing that he is totally dissatisfied with his life, his relationships, and with himself. In this moment, he turns to an entire waiting room of patients, themselves waiting for therapist / psychiatrist, and asks, “What if this is as good as it gets?” The people waiting wail and cry and are shocked. We all want it a little better, a little easier, a little more complete. And the thought that we are stuck…well, we’d rather not think about it at all.

Satisfaction. Are we satisfied with ourselves? Are we satisfied with our families? Better yet, are we satisfied with God? That last sentence, “are we satisfied with God,” is a hard question to type. God is God. We are not. Our satisfaction is not essential to the preservation of the universe, to the prevenience of grace, or to the origin and maintenance of love. Our satisfaction is a luxury; God’s goodness and mercy, those are the requisites.

There is a stunning moment in John 14 that haunts me and drives this blog today and my sermon on Sunday. Even if you have not read John 14, my guess is that you know it in part. After John 3:16, it is certainly the most famous passage in John and perhaps the entire Bible. John 14: 1 – 7:

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going." Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him."

Very good. Note Thomas’ anxiety. And then note the pastoral, lovely, and kind way that Jesus responds to him. Have you ever heard that before? I imagine many of you have.

And then comes verse 8. Often skipped over. Often forgotten. John 14: 8:

Philip said to Jesus, "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied."

Just amazing. In the presence of the Jesus and Philip is not satisfied. Philip can’t get no satisfaction. He is standing in the waiting room, and looking to Jesus, speaking to the disciples there, and speaking to us as we read his words: “What if this is as good as it gets? Jesus, is that all? I was expecting a little more for the price of the ticket.”

What is it that God can do to satisfy us? Do we ever let God off the hook? When is enough, enough? Do you think you are a Thomas, or are you a Philip? Or like me – hoping to be a Thomas but much more like Philip demanding more and asking for greater bang for the buck. Will we ever be satisfied?

It is a tough question. It would be so much easier to follow Jesus, to be a good disciple, if we would just get messages in the sky everyday from God. Or, better yet, if our lives had a scroll at the bottom of the screen (like CNN and ESPN and other channels have) – constantly telling us, “God says no, Christopher, don’t eat that cheesecake.” Or, “Yes, you can use that illustration in your sermon.”

Just show us the Father, give us the guide book, the user’s manual, and we will believe and we will be satisfied and we will quit asking for so very much. Just show us, Jesus.

But it doesn’t work that way. Never has. Never will. And often we are like Philip, looking past the Lord in our presence, more focused on what isn’t there instead of what is there, wasting away in missed opportunity and dissatisfaction; our spiritual appetites never satiated because we are constantly waiting on the next course instead of eating what is prepared.

Will we ever be satisfied? May God grant us all satisfaction.

DownEastPastor - new kids photo

My three children - Patrick, Gabriel, and Amelia

Easter-time 2008

(photograph by me, on my friend Faye's camera)

Sneek Peak - Shepherd's Sunday

"The Good Shepherd" - Window at Howard Memorial Presbyterian Church,

Tarboro, North Carolina

This Sunday is Shepherd’s Sunday. It’s title derived from Jesus’ autobiographical-testimony: “I am the Good Shepherd I know my own and my own know me – I am the Good Shepherd – the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep” (Gospel of John, Chapter 10).

Shepherd’s are “funny” to us. I have yet to seen a box to mark next to the word “shepherd.” As in filling out the paper work for the LSAT, the GMAT, the SAT, the GRE –

Future Career/Vocation:
§ Doctor
§ Lawyer
§ Actor
§ Shepherd
§ Administration
§ Contractor

You get the idea. Indeed you Gen Xer’s (folks born in the late 60’s or 70’s) will remember our generations first romantic hero, Lloyd Dobler. Played by John Cusack, Lloyd was the heartthrob (and still is) for nearly every thirtysomething woman you know. Lloyd had career aspirations that were less than ordinary. He didn’t want to “sell or buy anything bought or sold” and believed that kickboxing was the sport of the future (incidentally it turns out he was right – it is no longer called kickboxing but it is called MMA – mixed martial arts – and it is HUGE in Asia and America in 2008). Indeed, the only career that Lloyd didn’t consider, I am sure, was “shepherd.”

Shepherd is not something we do.

Shepherd is not something we aspire to become.

Shepherd is not what we pray our little boys and girls will grow up to be.

It is strange and foreign to us.

And so there is a disconnect. What is Jesus talking about? What is a good shepherd? Why is it so important to him that we know him as a shepherd? What not say, “I am the good doctor?”, or the good pastor, or the good innkeeper?

The word shepherd occurs in the Bible 64 times. Moses was a shepherd. David was a shepherd. Joseph dabbled in shepherding. The angels first spoke to the shepherd that Christmas night so very long ago. Long before he was the “reason for the season” Jesus was a tale told around shepherd’s campfires. And so something is going here with all the shepherding to and fro from the Old Testament to the New.

I suppose this is why Shepherd’s Sunday comes around every year. Traditionally the 4th Sunday of Easter, it is a day when we think about shepherding. I will not beat around the bush or trivialize it: preaching about shepherds, shepherding, and sheep is not easy every year. There are only so many illustrations. So many anecdotes.

But it provides a useful forum to ask: I have never shepherded. And yet I think I am able, responsible, capable of leading my own spiritual life. You see most of us want to identify with the shepherd, the leader, the in-charge person, the decision-maker. But Jesus, God, sees us as the sheep.

What do you need to know about sheep? They are totally dependent on the shepherd. Totally. Safety. Water. Grasses. Life itself. All of it -- comes by the grace and skill of the shepherd.

And the hearers of Jesus’ sermon, his self-statement would have understood exactly what he was talking about. Last year I wrote: “If you will allow me to use a badly stretched metaphor…what crawfish is to Louisiana, what lobster is to Maine, what Beef is to Texas, what Barbeque is to Eastern North Carolina – the sheep was to Israel.”

Our trouble is that we do not identify easily with the metaphor. “Don’t be sheepish” is what we hear, and practice, and believe.

Do you see yourself as the shepherd or the sheep? Be careful as you decide. The world needs both. 1 Peter Chapter 2 admonishes us: “For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.” Chances are most of us are sheep. If that makes me sheepish, or even mutton, then so be it. As long as I am following where the Lord might lead, I am of use in the kingdom of God. And usefulness is what the world, and the pasture, and the herd, and field of dreams that is the gospel most desperately need.

When the Answer is No - Sneek Peak (3 of 3 for April 4)

Blog 3 of 3 for April 4, 2008 – Sneek Peek – The Answer Sometimes is No

Just in case you have never read it, the Book of Deuteronomy is a daunting read. But, it is well worth it. This “second law” of Moses stands near the center of the corpus that is Old Testament.
In one of the odd twists of fate, turns in the story that is scripture, Moses, hero of the Israelite exodus is told, “No – you will not see the promised land.” God stops him on U – he never gets to Z; never gets to recite the final four letters that would complete his journey from Egypt to Midian to Egypt to the Wilderness to Canaan. The heavy lifting of taking Canaan by storm, of confronting Jezebel and the Canaanites – that will be led by Joshua. At Deuteronomy 32:55 (you can read the whole episode at Deuteronomy 32: 44 – 52) Moses gets he verdict: “Although you may view the land from a distance, you shall not enter it-- the land that I am giving to the Israelites.”
Moses gets told no.
Tough lesson.
Tough love.
Tough stuff.
There is no more dejected feeling that when a prayer is rejected. When we search, souls longing for a sanctified yes, and we received a divine no.
And yet, we all know it to be true – sometimes the answer is no.
On Sunday, in part I will preach:

What makes this doubly hard to accept is the fact that we don’t have to do anything wrong, like Moses, to receive a “no” from the mouth of God. Jesus himself prayed for the cup to be taken from him, but was told that it could not be removed. The Apostle Paul in those famous words from 2nd Corinthians wrote “three times I asked God to remove [my pain] from me” but the answer was “no.” Instead, God said, “my grace is sufficient.”
In his book, In the Grip of Grace, Christian writer Max Lucado writes, “Test this question: What if God’s only gift to you was his grace to save you? Would you be content? You beg him for the life of your child. You plead with him to keep your business afloat. You implore him to remove the cancer from your body. What if his answer is, ‘My grace is enough?’ Would you be content?”[1]
I suspect the answer for almost everyone is “no,” we would not really be content. We would be hurt, for we turn most often to God when we are most vulnerable. But to only respond to the pain of our lives, to the pain of God’s supposed rejection with despair might be too hasty, it might just be too easy. Lucado, in the same passage continues, “If you have eyes to read these words, hands to hold this book, the means to own this volume, God has already given you grace upon grace.”
It is precisely the overwhelming goodness of God’s many “yes’s” in our lives that make the “no’s” so terrible to bear. We do indeed, despite the setbacks we suffer, have many, many blessings in our lives. There is truth to Tennyson’s great verse, “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
I do not want to suggest this morning that consolation in the grace of God will magically make the pain of “no” go away. For some this is true. Most of us, though, struggle deeply when we feel God’s rejection. But to loose our faith, to stop the practice of prayer, to give up hope no matter the depth of our loss, to act like Peter in his denial of Jesus instead of Moses in faithful prayer to God is a mistake that we should not make. If we see only “no” every time we think about God, then we have lost touch with God’s grace. Are we so upset with God for saying “no” that we, unlike Moses, no longer see the many “yes’s” that God grants us on an hourly basis? For if we are, then we run the risk of losing everything.

How do you process and deal with God’s “no’s?” I have found that faith is best known when God has said no and our hearts are still saying yes, even in the face of terrible rejection.
“Are you a FDF?” – a Fully Devoted Follower – the Mountaintop Christian Mission of Tennessee asks its participants to ask themselves. Or is our devotion a conditional devotion – only good on the days when we deem that God is good to us?
[1] Quoted from Grace for the Moment, pg. 374.