Among those present: fathers of dead children, to suicide, to murder, to degenerative pediatric heart disease; men whose careers were cut short by cardiac disease and drunk drivers; a woman who had been raped and others whose history of physical and sexual abuse is unimaginable.
There is only to pray to create a safe container for the holding of these stories and the sharing of this grief before the unimaginable powers of evil. Gently then and by grace, the prayer becomes to sit among the uncompromising threads of their suffering and their sorrow. It is to wait, in silence, for the still small voice of the mercy and compassion in this place of suffering-with and their to begin to establish the frail bonds of hope beyond all reason and good sense, to call forth in them some dim faith light years removed from any sense of entitlement or justice for the continued living of their days.
No Easter sermons here; he is perhaps in a grave so deep one will never be proclaimed. Ehrman and his problem of God seems a sophist’s folly. Olstene’s, “all will be well” pails before the grim reality that it is not nor will it ever be again. Lacado proclaims that, “God is good… that faith is believing that God will do what is right.” None of this is right nor is any of it God’s doing. There is no reason for suffering such profound evils in any human life. The only hope this work can offer—to suffer with, to pray for a heart of rachamin*, to wait on grace from beyond this place, to sit quiet witness of love from the deepest depths, the rechem** of God. There is no other hope or grace, or strength for sitting in this place, the only container, by grace, the rechem of God.
* Hebrew for compassion
** Hebrew for womb
There is only to pray to create a safe container for the holding of these stories and the sharing of this grief before the unimaginable powers of evil. Gently then and by grace, the prayer becomes to sit among the uncompromising threads of their suffering and their sorrow. It is to wait, in silence, for the still small voice of the mercy and compassion in this place of suffering-with and their to begin to establish the frail bonds of hope beyond all reason and good sense, to call forth in them some dim faith light years removed from any sense of entitlement or justice for the continued living of their days.
No Easter sermons here; he is perhaps in a grave so deep one will never be proclaimed. Ehrman and his problem of God seems a sophist’s folly. Olstene’s, “all will be well” pails before the grim reality that it is not nor will it ever be again. Lacado proclaims that, “God is good… that faith is believing that God will do what is right.” None of this is right nor is any of it God’s doing. There is no reason for suffering such profound evils in any human life. The only hope this work can offer—to suffer with, to pray for a heart of rachamin*, to wait on grace from beyond this place, to sit quiet witness of love from the deepest depths, the rechem** of God. There is no other hope or grace, or strength for sitting in this place, the only container, by grace, the rechem of God.
* Hebrew for compassion
** Hebrew for womb
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