Redrawing Our Spiritual Maps Through Suffering and Grace

so here's the question for today where have you changed your ideas about god where did you have thoughts about god that were childish or immature or wrong or don't fit your understanding of life scripture wherever you change your ideas of god or where do you think that you might need to [00:15:45]

and most particularly it makes me think about our map of god and life and reality and really loose means with this book that we're journeying through together uh is doing that he was very honest and uh uh very forthright about the fact that he often found god to be an elusive character [01:20:56]

he writes one of them that happened relatively earlier on in his and doris's marriage about four years into their time when he was teaching at calvin he writes doris gave birth to a beautiful baby boy who died before he had lived the whole of a day god's face has never looked the same to me since [02:39:12]

but i could not believe that god was in control of our child's dying he talks about how earlier on in his christian life he'd been intellectually excited by calvin's what he calls tough-minded belief that all things he really meant all of them including the ghastly and horrible happened when and how and where they happened [03:27:44]

on the day our babied boy died i knew that i could never again believe that god had arranged for our tiny child to die before he had hardly begun to live any more than i could believe that we would one fine day when he would make it all plain praise god that it had happened [03:56:72]

i learned that i do not have the right stuff for such hard-boiled theology i am no more able to believe that god micromanages the death of little children that i am able to believe that god was macromanaging hitler's holocaust with one morning's wrenching intuition i knew that my portrait of god would have to be repainted [04:15:19]

and i find that the thought that god suffers along with us that that's part of the message of the cross that somehow in some mysterious way i can join in the fellowship of the sufferings of jesus that if i bring my sufferings to him i can meet him at a deeper place than i would be able to otherwise [05:17:91]

through the valleys of suffering and darkness and pain that don't have to be the valleys of despair that's been a way that i've had to redraw my map and i'm wondering how suffering might do that for you in a similar way luke talks about an episode in his life some years later when there was also suffering [05:46:56]

he came from a tradition where there wasn't talk about that much talk about that aspect of god then he went to teach at fuller there were these classes on signs and wonders and miraculous events that lou was actually asked to give theological reflection to it's quite an amazing journey and he did that in a remarkable way [06:15:19]

i did not know where god was during this time i only knew that wherever he was he was not with me god came back to me at the very moment i had reached ground zero in my own hopelessness i had been living alone for a couple of weeks as a therapeutic regimen in a secluded cabin on one of the islands [07:27:68]

god came back he broke through my terror and said i will never let you fall i will always hold you up when i heard him speak remember lou doesn't use this language lightly or as some of my friends say imagine that i heard him speak i felt as if i had been lifted from a black pit straight up into joy [08:29:59]

i swallow every capsule with a gratitude to god almost makes it sound like it's communion so how is your map of god what needs to be redrawn take a little prozac get to work worship god with a community this weekend be honest with him and i'll see you tomorrow [09:31:04]