But Things Have Changed
“And rend your heart and not your garments.” Now return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness and relenting of evil. Joel 2:13 NASB
Return– How do you feel when it all comes back? What do you think of God’s grace and compassion when all the trials, struggles and discouragements return? Why should you continue to echo Exodus 34:6 and 7 if God can’t keep the bad things away?
“Return,” says Joel. The verb is šûb (vocalized – shuv). It is used more than 1000 times with dozens of nuances, covering everything from physical relocation to verbal replies. This verse draws on God’s own description to Moses. And that raises a deep and perplexing question. The verb implies that the reader(s) was once close to the Lord and now is exhorted to come back into that relationship. The appeal is to experience grace, mercy, compassion and ḥesed once again because God is patient and despises evil. It sounds so good. But what if it’s God who is the one who has pulled away? What if the relationship hasn’t changed because of something you did but because God stopped doing what you expected Him to do? What if you’ve been faithful, obedient and loving and suddenly, without warning, some old catastrophe, some previously resolved agony, some long-forgotten terror shows up again. Wasn’t God supposed to protect His children from changes like these? Didn’t He promise to cast forgiven sin away, as far as the East is from the West? Why, then, is it back? Why has the dread returned?
Our religious training focuses on human failure to maintain the relationship with God, but is there another side to this, a side where God seems to have failed to keep things going? Aren’t there times when we believe we’ve done everything we were supposed to do and the bad things still show up? What are we to think then? It doesn’t do much good to seek repentance. What is there to repent of when we have been faithful? And it’s not much consolation to be told, “Well, God has a plan.” Yes, He does, but does that justify suffering for the righteous? Ask Job. What did he do to deserve all the tragedy in his life? Apparently nothing. Aren’t there times when Job comes knocking on our doors, when God’s absence is unexplainable? If you think that reading a few more lines in this examination of the text is going to provide an answer, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. There are plenty of answers for tragedies that happen to unrighteous people, but why God decides to put Job through grief and pain is left without comment. And it seems to me that we all share a little slice of Job’s experience sometime in life.
What is left to say when we’ve done everything right and the cancer come back or the child still dies or the husband still leaves or the house still burns? Maybe Brad Young’s definition of faith is all that’s left: perseverance. Just keep going. No, it doesn’t make sense. Yes, it seems completely unfair. But just keep going. What else can you really do? Ecclesiastes 12:13-14.
Topical Index: šûb, return, turn, repent, tragedy, Ecclesiastes 12:13-14, Joel 2:13
I realize this is your journey,but lighten up a little ,life can be hard enough without your endless probing of hopelessness. You sure can paint a picture of the pit of despair better than anyone .You say you have evolved over the years with that I agree.
I’m sorry this exploration has upset you. Perhaps you are one of those lucky ones who has never had to deal with real despair. If so, you are blessed. Most people I know have had a bout at one time or another. In my case, I find that the universal language of human beings is pain. So if I’m not willing, or if I have not experienced, this kind of pain, then how can I relate to those who are like me.
Trust me being 65 I have had my share of REAL despair so don’t be so condescending. Your emotional slant on every scripture can be a little too subjective.Not too toot my horn but I took care of homeless for years took them into my home supported them on my own dime, so on am not oblivious to the pain and suffering of others either. Though you find the universal language of humanity is pain they showed me joy ,good sense of humor, and hope even in spite of it,
Not condescending at all. There are people whose lives seem to skirt real trauma. I see that you are not one of them. But perhaps you’ve progressed further than I have. As for emotional slants on Scripture, I believe we have too long treated the text as a sterile theological primer rather than stories of real human experience. So I guess I will continue on this track.
I guess a back handed compliment is better than nothing.
Back-handed? That’s not what I intended. Sorry.
I am afraid that this is going to be way too long. Pam, your lucky to have meet Skip while you are still ‘young’. You remind me of a young girl I meet one day, 4 years ago entering the elevator where I live. She looked at me and said ” I’m much older than you. Today I’m 70 !” I smiled and told her ” Yes, you could be, for I’m only 90″. I just meet Skip a couple months ago, I wish it had been earlier –but God’s time is awesome. And he has influenced much of my life, really only inforced it. Actually, his focus is much of what I see everyday. You used a past tense in working with the homeless, just be cause your 65 please don’t retire. According to insurance life under writers, retirement for those who quit working (serving others) means death.6 months to a year average. I live in a central down town area of a Western Washington city where homeless abounds. Yes many have joy and a positive out look, but there is a higher percent where it is gloom and doom — no hope. The building I live in used to be for seniors only, but now for those of us who need assistance. and in the last year and half we have had 3 suicides. While most of my day is dominated with the use of a cane, old injury in 1946, (had to brake my 1st date with the love of my life) it’s slow going but each day is an opportunity for growth and serving God and not my good feelings. Oh by the way Sugar Ray does not mean I’m sweet or that I “box”. But that I pour sugar on the “Grit’s+ at the “Community Breakfast ” were our church feed the needy and homeless for over 20+ years. When I moved in the building 17 years age I was told that after dark DON”T go out side there are all those homeless and drug dealers out there. That is, to me,is like my mother telling me not to cross the street. SO after dark I went outside the building and what did I hear. “Hey!!!! Sugar Ray, what are you doing down here. They were all my friends from the breakfast.
Your being upset about Skip’s “exploration” should cause you to maybe look in the mirror. I’ve found when I get upset by what someone said. I first evaluate WHY?, Why am I so offended. Please check. Shalom
Sugar Ray, just wanted to say “Hello!” We sat together at that meeting where you met Skip. What a pleasure your company was. My regards to your young companion, too. Shalom!
Leslee, Hello right back—I thought your picture with your name looked familiar– but I have a problem with name memory. or memory period. Always looking to develop closer friendships my age group is deserting me.
Oh my ,now I someone thinking I have retired from humanity that it’s past tense. Boy a lot of assuming going on.
your interesting.. Shalom
We all need to walk a day in your shoes Ray, or preferably a year to really get the feel bro. You are an amazing man. Thanks for your contributions.
Skip, I have begun to teach my teenagers to approach the scripture from this angle, and I thank you for providing me with the perspective to do so. My family and I have had our share of trauma, and big ugly “whys.” And I’m recovering, finally, from several years of wild and woolly bipolar misadventures, replete with guilt, shame, doubt, grief, and trauma–And two novels and a bunch of blogs which you should read. How do you appear before the Most High when, like Nebuchadnezzar, you finally come to your senses? How do you rebuild your relationship? I feel like a car whose maniacal driver has climbed out after a life-long career of serial hit and run homicides. And here I sit, engine running, transmission in neutral, looking back thinking – Oh fudge, *I* did all that?
Your blogs, including this one, have made the scripture even more relatable, and wonderfully messy. They give me hope.
My mother would have summed up your blog with “Life, it do get tedious.”
Doesn’t the garden precedes the cross? To know him and the fellowship of his sufferings….
Thank you Skip for today’s posting right on point, we have to get to the point where we stop drinking milk and have some real food
So true, thank you so much for sharing that. I have often thought when I have been faithful, when I have struggled through a difficulty, challenge, when everything went up in smoke, and yet, I didn’t curse God and die, that God should have thrown a party and killed the fatted calf for me in celebration. But no party, no celebration, just silence . This is a when you can do nothing but persevere and hang in there. The trying of our faith which is much more precious than gold that perishes…
Ecc. 1:12, 13 tells that anguish is given to the sons of men, and for Job, at least, it resulted in meeting God face to face. “I’ve heard of you with the hearing of the ears but now, I’ve seen you with my eyes.” It’s an odd thing that the most “godly” people I know, seem to have suffered the most, but I’m not sure that the circumstances they encounter are so very different than the situations endured by the “ungodly” as grief and loss is so very common to mankind in general. It’s just that the faithful seem to hurt more, and I think that’s the point. I wonder if we can really by completed (made in His Image) if we’re unable, or more exacting, unwilling to experience grief in the same manner as God does, because His grief concerning us is imposed on Himself willingly. I’ve heard it said that those who share great suffering together, such as in wartime situations, develop an unbreakable, lifetime bond. Maybe, that’s what God desires of us, to not only share in the joys of fellowship in abundance but to grieve with Him in His intensity. Someone said something about considering it pure joy when trials and temptations come along.
YHWH bless you and keep you…..
Robert,
Well put.
Our walk is to walk in His shoes, so to speak.
He invites us to experience reality as He does.
That way, we can have His insights making our relationship
more dynamic and more credible. We’re sinners. He is not.
That gap takes a lot of understanding and a lot of patience
and suffering to get to. My biggest growth spurts came as a result
of painful reality. Seems to me this is God’s grand design. And as we
figure this out, it is “pure joy”!
“It’s just that the faithful seem to hurt more, and I think that’s the point.” I believe you are on to something. Perhaps the faithful hurt ‘more’ because in choosing to press in to the Holy One in the midst of their pain, that leaves no choice for numbing the pain with something else.
I think that’s true. The function of the yetzer ha’ra is to keep us focused internally – on ourselves. This requires constant diversion. We live in a world of elevator music so that we won’t feel what is actually happening to others, to the creation and to ourselves. When that music stops, the impact of real evil becomes more and more apparent, and leads to great sorrow (Yeshua weeping over Jerusalem) and great pain (Jeremiah’s reaction to the people’s rebellion). It also leads to rejection by the masses who want nothing to do with the pain of the broken creation. So as we draw closer, the sadness of God becomes more and more real. Of course, there are moment of joy, splinters of victory, visions of hope, but so far the creation groans and so we will as we find the heart of the Father. Much easier to just turn up the volume on the elevator.
It is as if YHWH purposefully puts us in places where we have to respond authentically. Even if that response means we squirm, scramble, scream or scat..something which serves to show us our true condition. We are easily boastful of our close relationship with Him when all is well, but let a little trouble creep in or chaos come calling and we no longer joyfully sing ‘How Great Thou Art’, but mournfully hum ‘Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen’. Perhaps all He wants to hear is what really is in our heart regardless of how it plays in Peoria. I am convinced that He delights in our sighs and screams, even our sacrilegious shouts as much as our praise and pious pleas. The former is always authentic, the latter is too often conditional and contrived.
Once again, you hit today’s nail right on the head for me, Michael. Put as only someone already walking out – as you have testified – that “catastrophe…previous agony… long forgotten terror” that you got handed on a stick (perhaps a fist, too).
I, too, want to know definitively that the someones in my life would be there for me, no matter what. How else would I possibly know – how would THEY know – unless life contrived to set up that scenario?
Also, I think we forget so easily that life is not about us in the singular, personal. Life is a collective experience. When Yeshua came to be us, He also vested us back into Him. “Partaker in (His) sufferings”, as well as adoptive sons and daughters sitting on the family throne, so to speak. How easily we assume the latter without understanding that it was the former that not only gave Him that position, but also likewise gives us that position, too.
How can we even understand – much less reign – over evil if we have never so much as had our chops busted by it; much less stood and stared it down? There is only one way to build muscle – whether physical, mental, or spiritual – and that is by exercise. I am convinced that disaster is designed to build the muscle that is required to reign over the evil that created the need for that strength in the first place. Hothouse flowers need not apply. We have to wade through the thorns before we get to sit on the throne.
Laurita, good words, as always. Your perspective is prescriptive. Thanks.
in response to “faith” = perseverance, i am learning that the Greek word for faith can also mean FAITHFULNESS…not faith as in “the mind”, but faith as in “the feet”….
As children, we heard, and as parents, we have come to understand, the “this hurts me more than it does you” statement.
I do not remember when I first considered – and now I read Genesis 3 and remember – the heartache, the anguish in Yah’s voice as He asks the man, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree which I commanded you that you should not eat?”
Not the stern condemnation we were [probably] taught to hear/read. The hurt, the disappointment, the disbelief, the pain that the child we love could have so chosen and we are now in the position of having to exercise the worst possible option, the unthinkable one because we had faith in them. What was the price/cost to Him of casting man out?
Ever since then, He has desired that we would “shuv”. Has longed for it. And we slip, we fail, we fall. “The saints are just the sinners who fall down… and get up.” (A lyric from a song Bob Carlisle sang, on his “Stories from the Heart” album, written by Kyle David Matthews.)
Thank you, Skip, for helping me remember this, and some of the dark moments in my own walk when shaking my fist at Him in my own anguish was so tempting right before I chose to remember “…merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin…” and choosing to press into His faithfulness despite my circumstances and the feeling that He wasn’t there for me.
The child dies. The cancer comes back. This in itself is a big subject but the most important subject I would say. Our health. Body and mind. How many people have died or have been injured because of doctors? Blindly trusting doctors is the worst thing you can do. Since the mid 50’s there has been a poisoning campaign going on by Big Pharma. It has caused brain damage, death, sickness. I believe the body has an amazing ability to heal itself as long as we do what we can do to let it do that. I am 60 so I know what it was like before and what has happened since, I warn people but it’s not easy. Cognitive dissonance. Brainwashing. Confusion. Brain damage. Unless we recognize the reason for all the issues, nothing will change. It’s not sin. The poisoning has to stop. Too much despair. Too much suffering.
Recently I was sharing with others the idea that one nuance of Shuv was to tear down or destroy the house and at once this idea seemed to connect to the crossing of the Jordan, the Jabbok crossing, of Jacob. The double house of the meaning of the name Jabbok. It seems to me Jacob wrestled with that – destroying one of those houses, and is or was a needed experience, destroy that in order to return into the land of promise. A place he’d run from. The place, as he was leaving, he was given a promise.
Oh, and take this new identity with you.
I would rather not do violence to the word of God, but it does seem so woven to allow this thought.
In many ways you seem here this day to be referring to the suffering of The Christ – that external attack, which happens in my life, unexplained and at no fault of my own. But He is just, so this must be just. That pascho experience. And He has deemed me worthy to walk this out before men. I love Him so.
Last comment, in fairness to the first commenter for this post, I’ve often read your posts from 2004, 2005, etc – all before you got comments – and your tone was of a man of substance who had much to share from that substance, in a joyful exuberant manner, sweet words of encouragement. Your tone now can read as a man of sorrow. That doesn’t diminish the truth within the writing, but I’m saddened by the tone. You still have much to share and you do care. To you both, poster and first commenter – press on, it must take courage to share the initial thought and to respond. You both show pain, so press on. With love, a brother.
Hi Pat, just out of curiousity, how do you search archives by someone’s name? I have tried this before without any success using the search “window” above.
Sorry that was unclear, it’s Skips archived posts to which I was referring. And I was trying to say his posts didn’t receive comments back then. I don’t think I’m experienced enough to track a commenters history.
I am being reminded of what Grace really is… Always under pressure Grace is at its finest. What are we being saved from? Hell and it’s reality. Going to heaven as it’s reality. No choice really
Hell is another one of those subjects. I don’t believe that anymore. Just destroyed.