Wisdom from a Nebraska Cowboy

What follows is an actual call in to a radio station from Logan, who turned 13 in August. Logan lives on a ranch in a very small town in Nebraska. He called distraught because he had to take down a calf.


The radio station's blog also posts this from his mom at The Sky Angel Cowboy:

I am Logan’s Mom………I don’t know how many come back to read these after they have blogged but I thought it was time to thank so many of you for the love and acceptance of my son’s heart. It truly was a work of God and it has increased Logan’s faith and brought healing to his heart in more ways than one!

God was There

In her book Amazing Grace: A vocabulary of faith, Kathleen Norris writes,

As is often the case, what comes easily is of considerably less value than that which comes hard, earned over time and with a struggle.

I once heard a Holocaust survivor asked if her experience of a death march and forced labor camp hadn't destroyed her faith in God. "Of course," she said, adding, "but only for a time." She had come to the conclusion that what she and so many others had endured was not God's doing, but was due to human beings having chosen to do evil. She said she now believed that God was good, but had given people the ability to choose between good and evil. As for the terrors that she and the other Jews of her village had endured, she had come to believe that God had been there all the time, suffering with them....

The woman was describing the God of ordinary religious faith, but her rediscovery of this God in adulthood had come to her by extraordinary and unspeakably cruel means.

Does faith have to come through a hard struggle? Or is it just more valuable if it does come through darkness and tears?

In the archives is a talk from the Questioning Your Faith series on Why does God allow suffering?

Does God Suffer?

At about three o'clock,
Jesus called out with a loud voice,
"Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?"
which means,
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
—Matthew 27:46

Since Christ suffered physical pain,
you must arm yourselves with the same attitude he had,
and be ready to suffer, too.
—1 Peter 4:1 (NLT)

...If God were in every respect incapable of suffering, he would also be incapable of love. He would at most be able to love himself, but not anything other than himself. But if he is capable of loving something other than himself, then he opens himself for the suffering which love for the other brings him, while still remaining master of the pain which is the consequence of his love. God does not suffer out of deficiency of being, like created beings. But he does suffer from his love, which is the overflowing superabundance of his being. And in this sense he can suffer.

—Jürgen Moltmann (1926- ) from his book Jesus Christ for Today's World quoted at Biblische Ausbildung where my Old Testament professor and friend previously took up this question here: Does God Suffer?.

That post offers a link to a very interesting PDF chart by Matthew R. Schlimm of Duke University working with the Old Testament texts on suffering. The chart is here: Does God suffer as humanity suffers. Schlimm concludes that there is definitely shared suffering on God's side of the equation, but, that differences remain between God's suffering and human suffering.

As for me, I look at tragedies in the world such as the recent deaths at Virginia Tech and the tornadoes in Kansas, etc. and knowing that God love's us so much assume that he suffers with those who suffer and feel that scripture and our experience of God's compassion in our own lives back up this assumption. What do you think?

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor

Teach these new disciples to obey
all the commands I have given you.
And be sure of this:
I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
—Matthew 28:20