JR. Forasteros - November 6, 2011
What's Behind Us
We live in a world shaped by choices other people have made. We live in an inheritance that seems pretty broken most of the time. It's easy to feel trapped by what's been chosen for us. But God gave Ezekiel a message for the Israelite Exiles that we need to hear too. God says that we are responsible to choose God here and now, in our time. That we will be held accountable not for what others have done to us but what we choose. What's behind us doesn't define us.
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About 2 years ago, I became a father. My wife gave birth to our daughter, Aria, on June 30th, 2016. And so began a journey I knew that I could never be fully prepared for. I had received a lot of good advice from parents, and some eh… so-so advice from non-parents. But overall, I felt pretty ready (haha.) I knew I wouldn’t be perfect, but the moment in which I truly felt like the worst parent ever came one evening when I was getting her ready for bed.
She was beginning to crawl and pull up on things, so I knew to be super wary when changing her on the changing table. Ya know, that’s 3 feet off the ground. I’m changing yet another nasty poop diaper and go to throw the diaper in the Diaper Genie and it’s full… awesome. So, I have to take my hand off Aria for like 3 SECONDS to shove that nasty diaper down in there real fast. You may have already guessed what happened. My firstborn child – the one we had prayed over and cherished so much – rolled and fell 3 feet, straight down, head first toward the hardwood floors that we had been so excited to have in this new house.
BUT my newly founded dad/ninja reflexes were starting to kick in and I managed to grab a leg and, by a miracle, not rip it off, which minimized the head to floor contact. And now, cue the freaking out, crying, and general hysterics… from me. Then my wife runs in, and the baby’s crying, I’m shaking from the terror and shame that I just damaged my child for the rest of her life and my wife will never forgive me and the world is over and I’m going to go to jail for child endangerment and…
Breathe. She was ok, I was ok, and, thankfully, no one was damaged for life.
It’s becoming more and more clear to me as time goes on that I’m not going to be the perfect father. I’m going to mess up. I’m going to let her down. And I know that everyone here is or has had an imperfect father. This can be part of why it’s hard to talk about God as our “father…” because we have all had a different experience with our earthly father. We often base our interactions and view of God the Father on our relationship (or lack thereof,) with our fathers. Maybe you had a dad that never said, “I love you,” but just expected you to know it. Maybe your dad left when you were young. Maybe you had an amazing dad. Maybe your dad died, and you always longed for more time to get to know him. Maybe you wish you’d never known your dad.
Every one of us has a unique view of what a father is, should be, or what we wished he would be. Regardless, God is a better father than we think he is. He is not there to criticize us, to abandon us, or to leave us hoping to gain his approval. He has done, and will do, everything he can to show how much he loves us, cherishes us, and, while it can sometimes hurt, help us to grow.
No matter what kind of dad we had, we’re celebrating that God is a better father than we think.
Join us Sunday as we discover how God the Father matters to each of us.
JR. Forasteros - November 6, 2011
What's Behind Us
We live in a world shaped by choices other people have made. We live in an inheritance that seems pretty broken most of the time. It's easy to feel trapped by what's been chosen for us. But God gave Ezekiel a message for the Israelite Exiles that we need to hear too. God says that we are responsible to choose God here and now, in our time. That we will be held accountable not for what others have done to us but what we choose. What's behind us doesn't define us.
From Series: "This is Not the End"
We often look at the way our culture is headed and lament what we've lost. But God is preparing something new, something better. By listening to the voices of Israelites who lived after the Exile, we can learn how to hope in God's new thing. Because this is not the End!
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You’ll never hear more bad theology than at a funeral.
One of the most difficult experiences in my pastoral career was in Ohio. A seventeen year old member of our church was killed in a car accident with her friends one night. The whole community was rocked, and as a result, several hundred came to her funeral. As one of the pastors, I stood with her parents in the receiving line, offering handshakes and hugs to mourners before they offered condolences to her parents.
If you’ve ever stood in those lines, you know that’s where people say some truly awful things. Things like, “God needed another angel in heaven.”
Really? God’s so needy he takes children? God can’t just make more angels?
Or, “Everything happens for a reason.” As though any reason is adequate to bring comfort in the midst of grief.
We say those things because we’re not good at grieving.
Other people’s grief makes us very uncomfortable. We feel an anxiety that makes us want to push all that away, to fix it, to do SOMETHING to make everything feel less awkward.
So we offer a cheap platitude because then we DID something and we can LEAVE and not feel like we’re abandoning someone.
Times like right now, when we’re not in the middle of the ickyness of grief, it’s obviously the wrong way to respond.
But what DO we do? How DO we respond to pain (and not just individual pain, but the pain in our culture, in our world)? What is a good, helpful, appropriate response to grief?
We’re going to talk about how to be WITH each other in our grief. To be honest about the pain, to bear witness with each other.
