Angels and Demons?

Call it getting into the spirit of Halloween, but I got into an interesting and slightly disturbing conversation with a girl last night. There is this supposed “exorcism room” in the school (for those who haven’t yet guessed, it’s a rumor). Anyway, there was a girl who overheard our conversation and warned us saying that we shouldn’t mess with demonic things. I agreed with her, up to the point where she said she is Christian, but she studied the occult and demonology (is this a science?). My response (which I said only in my head) is this: why bother with demons at all? The devil is real, but as C.S. Lewis once wrote there are two risks, we can either hyper-focus on demons or not believe in them at all. Now, do I believe in exorcisms or possessions? Well, I can’t say for sure what I believe when it comes to demons, because so little is written in the Bible other than that the devil tempts man away from God. I do know this though; God is more powerful than the devil. There is no power of hell that can beat God, if we are strong in Christ then we are safe from harm. We cannot be physically harmed or taken over, because God is always watching over us and keeping us safe. Never did Jesus lose the battle between the devil, so what reason is there to fear him so? My philosophy is such, fear God and God alone. It doesn’t matter what the devil can do to us, because I know that God is stronger and will keep me safe from harm. Sure my life can get crazy at times, sure I may stray and fall to sin, but I am never out of God’s hand and grace and am therefore saved. Sure the devil desires to take us from God’s hand, but if we are strong in God we cannot be harmed. There is nothing to fear but God, all else is taken care of.

So Great is His Unfailing Love

Well I couldn’t stay away from the blog forever. Honestly though I’ve been going through a lot the past two weeks and sometimes you just feel wrung out. It’s like I was at the end of my rope and didn’t really have the strength to tie a knot and hold on. That changed last night though. It is easy to forget about God, so much can happen in our lives that a few days that you forget to pray can really add up. That happened to me. I forgot where God was in my life, I lost sight of Him and when life began to crash down around me I suddenly realized the sad fact, I was alone. As I said, that changed last night. A good friend invited me to a prayer group they regularly attend, and the passage we read couldn’t have been more fitting. It’s long so I’ll spare you by not writing it out, but it came from Lamentations chapter 3. Lamentations is basically Job on steroids, all jokes aside it was written by a man who reflecting on Jerusalem’s destruction by the Babylonian empire. Imagine that, watching your home city completely trashed by ruthless soldiers, and there is nothing you can do about it. A few verses stuck out to me, the first 20 verses reflect on immense pain and loneliness but then verses 21-22 hit you, “Yet I call to mind and therefore have hope: because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail.” Then there is verse 32 “Though He brings grief, He will show compassion, so great is His unfailing love.” A lot of bad things have happened in my life, not just recently, over the past two years. I can sit and moan, I can complain and whine, I can even give up. Here’s the thing though, we can’t lose hope, God will always be there to deliver us, sometimes in surprising ways. I wanted Him to appear in a storm cloud and tell me why He allowed pain in my life, instead He spoke quietly through a friend who by chance invited me to a prayer meeting I desperately needed. All I can say is “Thank you God, for you are so good as to never forget me or leave me. Though I leave you, you still love me. Such is true and unconditional love, something I need to learn to accept and put into practice in my own life.” Sometimes I feel that I should be taking my own advice, well before that I should take advice from the main source, God. It doesn’t matter what I go through, how weak I am, or how much I lose. I can lose everything that I ever loved but I will never lose God, and that is one thing that I can hold onto every day of my life.

Notice

Just wanted to let my readers know that I will not be posting for some time, so I am sorry for that. I've coming off of a very eventful week and doubt I will have much time to write in the near future. Please keep reading though and as soon as I find myself in a position to write I will. Right now I think a period of reflection is best. God bless.

There Has to Be a Reason

I’ve had a few more thoughts on the Book of Job lately, so here they are in my latest post. I was helping a friend with homework on Job yesterday and we got into an interesting discussion debating the question of whether or not God causes suffering or if He just allows it. In the Book, God has a bet with the devil saying that Job won’t curse Him even if he loses everything. My friend claimed that this was cruel on God’s part, and I admit it certainly does seem that way. Why would God so mercilessly allow the devil to ruin Job’s life? My question is this, why did God allow my dog to die at the age of three? Why did God allow my great Uncle who I just got to really know die of a stroke? Why did God allow the turmoil of last year’s issues in my life? The answer, well honestly I don’t know. But I do know this fact, God is good, and all good things come from Him. The key note I tried to stress to my friend is that the devil was the one who ruined Job’s life, not God. The devil took Job’s family, flocks, and health – God just gave him the freedom too. So is it cruel of God? Well, what about my examples from my own life, was God being cruel to me, or is it just that bad things simply happen to good people? Back when Job was written the Hebrew people had a very simplistic view of life; if you are a good man you have a good life and if you sin you have a bad life. Really, the author of Job is using his story as an example of the fact that life is not so simple. I demonstrated to my friend that a large chunk of the Old Testament is law; you’ve got parts of Exodus, and then Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The magic formula said that if you follow these laws you will have a good life. Here’s the thing though, the world is imperfect because of sin. No one is perfect, and the world is in an imbalance because of it. Evil men live long prosperous lives while good men often suffer. Does that mean that God is bad or cruel, no, it just makes a statement about the fact that the devil can, and often does, ruin things in our lives by causing bad things to happen. This doesn’t mean that God doesn’t have any power or say though; God can use those bad things for His glory and our good. Through our struggles we can move on and do God’s work here on earth, completely reversing the devil’s work. God has the ultimate power to take a negative and turn it into a positive. Is that the reason for suffering? Well I think the reason for suffering is the simple fact that our world is an imperfect one, but the fact that God can use our suffering for good just goes to show you that ultimately He is always in control and looking out for us.

And the Verdict is.... GUILTY

Look a late night post; just one of the many abilities college has given me, the not-so-super power of staying up past 10:00 pm. So what has kept me up this late? Well nothing much, just one of far too many scathing commentaries about the Boston Dead Sox. So what caused the downfall? Was it a dearth of timely hits? Bad chemistry? Terry Francona? Overweight pitchers underweight with talent? Well I think the answer can be found in the most basic sin, the one that the devil passed on to mankind, and that my friends is pride. Pride is what took the Red Sox by storm, and it’s ugly sister greed also had her fair share as well. Face it Sox fans, the Red Sox are what the Yankees were except they can’t win. Remember the evil empire? Remember Sox ownership denouncing the Yankees for stretching their tentacles down into other teams, breaking the bank for high priced players? Well do Adrian Gonzalez or Crawford ring a bell? Not that I’m criticizing the Sox for this. They are blessed to be a wealthy ball club and it would be foolish for them not to spend the money on good players because a team of good players will (or maybe “should” is a better word) win. Here’s my real issue though. Not with the Sox, with ownership. Let’s face it, the worst thing to happen to the Sox since the trade of Babe Ruth is NESN Sports Ventures (hyperbole? Maybe). When John Henry added LFC to his toy chest full of goodies I knew things were going downhill, I even wrote a post about it last year. The Sox aren’t his pride and joy anymore, instead they are just another cog in his money making machine. Until John Henry learns to pay attention to his possessions, instead of just seeing them as figures on a balance sheet, the Sox will never win. It wasn’t beer and chicken, it wasn’t Francona and Theo, it was John Henry and the NESN toy chest that killed the Red Sox.

Questions

For one of my classes we had to read from the book of Job. Now for those who don’t know, Job was a good man who God allowed a lot of bad things to happen. Why? Well it’s not essential to the story, the whole book is a dialogue between Job and his friends trying to find out why God allowed Job to lose everything, instead though they should be asking “what God wants Job to do with his situation.” Life can be really hard, I’ve learned that lesson in the past two years and sometimes it can seem like you don’t get a break. Here’s the thing, life has no breaks but that doesn’t mean we have to go it alone. Job thought that after he lost his home and family that was it, but he wasn’t even close because in the end God appeared and blessed him more than he was before. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does life have to be as hard as it is? Why is it so hard to do the right thing? Well I don’t know, honestly I have no idea, but I do know this, God is faithful and God is with us. No matter what you are going through you can bet God is there right by your side every step of the way. In one of the Narnia books there is a scene when someone is riding on a horse on the edge of a cliff in the fog and all they can do is keep going following Aslan (the God figure). It’s like that, even though sometimes I can’t see the next step in front of me, God is there directing me every step of the way and I needn’t have fear. Psalm 119: 105 says “Your word is a lamp to my feet, a light to my path.” Sometimes you don’t always get a spotlight, but a candle will always do the job.

Lessons Learned From Baseball

I played in the annual “100 Inning Baseball Game” on Saturday. By a miracle I made it through 37 innings in 10 hours. The breakdown was 20 innings split between RF and CF, 12 innings behind the plate, and I finished the final 5 innings as a DH. I forget what inning it was, it must have been the 28^th or 29^th, either way I had been catching for a while and was exhausted. The most I had ever caught before was 3 innings, so 12 were very taxing on my body. In my previous at bat I struck out on three pitiful swings and was up at bat again, even more tired. We were stuck at 26 runs for a while and the other team was catching up. Basically, we needed a hit desperately. The pitcher threw a first pitch fastball, which I swung at with all my might and hit it deep, far, and foul down the right field line. Next pitch was a ball, and then he threw me a pitch low and outside. I swung my bat out as hard as I could and to my surprise squared up enough to hit a hot grounder up the middle for a single! Once on base there were a couple quick outs to which I responded with 2 barely stolen bases, finally scoring from 3^rd. By no means was I a hero. I didn’t hit a homerun; I barely squeaked a single up the middle. But I mustered the little strength I had and gave it my best in that last swing. Often in life it can feel that way. We can feel like we have no strength to carry on, that what we really want to do is take a break, but here’s the thing: life doesn’t stop for us, the game still has to be played. So what do we do? Well we can give up but then we let ourselves down. Or instead we can accept God’s grace and strength in our lives and succeed. Before my at bat I said “Look, right now I’m just a catcher, I’m not gonna get a hit.” Here’s the thing, God doesn’t give up on us, instead He carries us through. In life the last thing I want to see is another hurdle to jump, but I don’t have to jump it alone, more often than not God gives me a boost over to help me keep going and finish the race. You may feel that your energy is spent and that the mountain is too big to climb. Well you’re forgetting that you’ve got an entire energy reserve in God’s grace and love, that God can carry us through out trials to the other side. Even when the situation seems impossible, whether it be as basic as getting a hit after playing 28 exhausting innings or something as major as anything life throws at us, we’ve always got God on our side to back us up no matter what.

Moment of Perfection

Here’s a post I wanted to write last week. It was Thursday night, my last night at Holy Cross before fall break. I had a lot of work to do and was taking a moment out of my day to go to evening Bible Study. It was one of those chilly fall days, I had my flannel shirt and barn jacket (typical farm clothes) and was walking up from the dining hall to the chaplains house. When I left the hall I was struck by the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen. A picture wouldn’t have come close to doing it justice. The sky was lit up a radiant pink and yellow while the east was a deep purple. I looked out at the city of Worcester and saw the purple rolling hills and the city all lit up preparing for a busy evening. It was then that I caught a moment of pure perfection, God’s grace untarnished by the sins of the world. It was that moment that was so perfect, that busy, stressful day, and then on a break from it all I see God’s glory in its finest. I believe God can speak to us in many ways, and on that night He was saying ‘Tay Tay, slow down.” Life can get fast, especially at college. Bad things happen, we go through loss, we take on stress, and sometimes we lose faith in ourselves. We cannot forget that one fact though, that God is always there with us, and will never let us go. You may think that you are too far, that you are out of God’s grace, heck you might even have given up a while ago. But God will not give up on us, and that sunset, that purity in my hectic day showed me that. You just have to have a little faith and a sense of adventure, because God can do some amazing things when you give Him the driver’s seat. I’ll never forget that evening, just as I will never lose faith in God’s goodness and His love.

He is Willing

Lately I’ve been reading through the Gospels, I finished the Old Testament so now I am at Matthew. I always loved reading the Gospels, you get a chance to see God interact directly with His people, it’s always really neat. Anyway, one thing I love about the Bible is how God speaks through it to me, how He’ll use certain phrases to stick out as if to say “Tay Tay! Wake up and pay attention!” Anyway, I was reading Matthew 8, the passage where Jesus heals a man with leprosy. The man walks up to Jesus and says “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” And do you know what Jesus’ response is? “I am willing.” For some reason that verse just struck me, it really did. The simplicity of it, “I am willing” can almost be deceptive, but then you’d miss the significance. God is always willing to help us, no matter what we’ve done or where we are going. He will always be willing to heal us. God is the only thing that can truly sustain us and bring joy to our lives. Sure that man with leprosy thought he could stick it out for a while, but then seeing that on his own nothing was getting better he had to call out to God. And God was willing. I firmly believe that no matter what happens, when you turn to God and ask Him for help He will help you. When we bow our heads to prayer Jesus lifts us up and gives us His strength, and why? Because He is willing to, because He loves us so much that He paid the ultimate price to heal us fully. Sure life can get out of hand, sure things can go wrong and it can seem like there’s no way out. But God is always willing; God will never refuse His people or deny them His love. Sometimes we miss the little things in the Gospels, but often it is these little phrases that show how much God truly loves us.