Monthly Archives: June 2020
Why Isn’t God Helping? Something I learned as I cry out…
Concordia Lutheran Church – Cerritos, Ca , at dawn on Easter Sunday
Devotional Thought of the Day:
Remember, life is short! Why did you empty our lives of all meaning? 48 No one can escape the power of death and the grave. Our Lord, where is the love you have always shown and that you promised so faithfully to David? Psalm 89:47-49 CEV
All this is summarized in the command in Ps. 50:15, “Call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver you and you shall glorify me.” All this is what we mean by calling upon his name in service of truth and using it devoutly. Thus his name is hallowed, as we pray in the Lord’s Prayer.
Dearest brothers, we should turn our minds and understand not only that we call him “Father who is in heaven,” but that we add to this and say: “Our Father,” that is of those who believe, of those who have begun to be children of God, sanctified through him and restored by a birth of spiritual grace.
I have to admit I feel much like the writer of the psalms this morning.
I feel useless, I feel as if my work on earth has no impact. Does being a pastor, or a friend, or a father mean anything anymore?
THought I saw and heard it three days ago on Sunday, as people received Christ’s body and blood, that seems a century ago. The curfews certainly add to it, after the months of stay at home orders. One doctor says it will be a year or more before life returns to normal because of the virus, another says months, another says years. The despair that results from the murder of a man and the reactions to it will take longer to heal.
And in this, I find I must cry out to God and ask “Why? Where are you?” “What the ….. is going on?”
I have to, or my heart will be crushed.
But it is the fact that I can cry out, that I realize there is someone there to hear my cries. IN crying out I use god’s name in one of the holiest ways possible. I use it and you should, for the very reason, God revealed His existence to us.
Deliver us from all of this, from all the unrighteousness, from all the injustice, from the sin. Clean us up Lord, start with me. Or just come back, as you have promised.
Even as I cry out to Him, I realize the cry is not just an act of despair, it is an act of faith. Perhaps only the weakest of faith, a hope that somehow He will answer my cry.
But even that amount of faith is miraculous amid the pain, the turmoil, the hatred I am seeing. I am crying out to my Father, the only one who can do anything about this.
That is faith.
That is the Holy Spirit at work, the Comforter breaking through the spiritual blackness, reminding me of Christ’s love.
That is why Cyprian says we need to move from Address God as “the” to “our”, why we need to realize the significance of that cry as we pray, even praying the Lord’s Prayer.
He is our Father, He is our God, and He hears our cries, and responds…
We need to cry out, to use the old word, lament. To confess how broken we are, and that we are depending on God to fix us. We need to do this!
Holy Spirit, fill our hearts with peace and strengthen our faith, our dependence on God to bring healing to the world, bring healing to us. AMEN!
Luther, Martin. The Lord’s Prayer, Theodore G. Tappert, ed., The Book of Concord the Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. (Philadelphia: Mühlenberg Press, 1959), 373.
Cyprian: On the Lord’s Prayer, ed. John Behr, trans. Alistair Stewart-Sykes, Tertullian, Cyprian, and Origen, On the Lord’s Prayer, Popular Patristics Series, Number 29 (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004), 71.
It Is Time To Pray and Sing!
Devotional Thought of the Day:
9 But when the people of Israel cried out to the LORD for help, the LORD raised up a rescuer to save them. Judges 3:9 (NLT2)
Our prayer is common and collective, and when we pray we pray not for one but for all people, because we are all one people together. The God of peace and master of concord, who taught that we should be united, wanted one to pray in this manner for all, as he himself bore all in one. The three youths shut up in the furnace of fire observed this law of prayer by joining together in harmony of prayer and agreement of spirit. The reliability of the divine Scriptures declares this; and while it teaches the manner in which they prayed, it gives an example which we should imitate in our prayers, inasmuch as we are able to be like them. It says: “Then those three sang as from one mouth and blessed the Lord” (Dan 3:51)
What is the worst thing that can happen to the Church? Not torture, murder, threats, persecution, or even the whole world conspiring to exterminate her from the face of the earth. That happened once, and the result was the greatest growth the Church has ever seen. Tertullian’s well known saying: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church”1 confirms that.
I vaguely remember protest marches as a child, but I always remember the people singing as they marched. I can remember hearing them on our little television, singing Amazing Grace as they marched, and the hymn gaining power.
I remember another event, just a few years ago, where a man bent on preaching a message of hate was silenced, not physically, but by a church simply saying the Lord’s prayer together. After the 20th time through or so, the man gave up, and was peacefully escorted out of the building.
In both cases, the prayer and worship of God’s people, their active connection ot Him, made a huge difference. It calmed the storm, it helped them remember why we are here. It kept the focus, the focus.
Someone commented to me this morning that they saw the difference that having 15 people in our church service made, compared to the empty room the week before. They said I was happier, more energetic. To be honest, with all that was going on, I didn’t realize this. I felt more drained, more stressed, more anxious, more in need of hearing the words, “and with they spirit” Yet the prayers of Gods people helped… and I was able to lead them in worship.
This is why Kreeft can’t comment that conflict and stress are not the worst things we can encounter. For these times often draw us together in prayer, and eventually in worship – even if that worship is a lament. There is something powerful about voices joined together – voices that are communicating with God. Similarly, Cyprian notes
So let us sing, let us pray aloud. Let us lead others in singing, even if it is simply choruses of Alleluia or Amazing Grace!
(but if you are with a bunch of others – please still wear your masks!)
Tertullian, Cyprian, and Origen, On the Lord’s Prayer, ed. John Behr, trans. Alistair Stewart-Sykes, Popular Patristics Series, Number 29 (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004), 69–70.
Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 207.
