Certain People

Its bad news when you have more blogs in your ‘drafts’ section than you do actually published so I think its about time I got back up on here for a rant.

I had a most unexpected chat today with a friend I hadn’t seen in a good while.  This friend’s family circumstances are nothing short of heartcrushing.  A daughter with profound learning difficulties and a husband who was diagnosed with MS a few years ago who has recently been diagnosed with epilepsy and even more recently severe osteoporosis (with the bones at the top of his spine crumbled to nearly nothing.) and bouts of ill health herself recently.

Often when I think about suffering on the individual/family level (as opposed to worldwide hunger etc), this family’s circumstances come to my mind.  I question how and why God could let it all happen to one family?  It is frightening the depth to which I am shaken to think that Certain People say that THAT would be God’s will. How the bleep can Certain People say that God gave her those circumstances?  That God causes such suffering “for His glory”?  Seriously… what kind of bleeping “glory” is that?

It makes me sick.

I asked my friend today how she reconciles all that she is facing with her faith in God, does she see Jesus in the midst of it all?  Without a second of hesitation she replied “Oh yes… constantly.”  No fake smile, no ‘God knows best’, no ‘there must be a reason’…  In fact she claimed that even when she meets Jesus, the last thing she’s gonna care about is ‘reasons’.  Her hold on the umbilical cord of her relationship with God is unbroken and unshaken even by circumstances of this life – this life which is significant but by no means the full story.

Her response fills me with hope and beauty and life and faith… is that not the glory?  That in, through, above and beyond this world – this life – which is broken and f*cked up, God is… God is! He doesn’t need to inflict suffering to show us what a nightmare things would be without him, how much better off we are or how powerful he is.  We don’t need to claim that in order to be ‘good Christians’ or submit to that kind of masochistic “sovereignty” or to show how much we know things are a mess without him…  We bloody well know he’s powerful and sovereign and that we need him because God is who He is!

Eugh.  I know I’m hardly being very gracious or even coherent, but do you know how popular Certain People are becoming even though this is what they are saying about El Roi ‘The God who sees me’???

(I also wonder what Certain People would say about this family seeing as the wife is the main breadwinner because the husband can’t be?)

I think Certain People should just shut the hell up.