You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘God’s love’ tag.
Elaine
Elaine and her husband Ian are long time volunteers from Canada, here at the home for needy children in Oaxaca, Mexico. The other day I asked Elaine if she believed God loves her and wants her to be happy. She said, “Absolutely!” Then I asked her why she thought God allowed her to lose her hearing.
Happy Children Playing
Artwork by Elaine
She had had perfect hearing most of her life. About 28 years ago she gradually began to lose her hearing do to menieres disease, losing her hearing first in one hear, and then in the other until she was totally deaf. She thought about my question. She told me that she never thought a lot about why God allowed her to lose her hearing. She told me about difficulties she experienced as her hearing became impaired. With tears in her eyes she recounted a recurring nightmare she had regarding her hearing loss and her increasing need to depend on devices used to help the hearing impaired. A few more tears appeared as she told me about how much she loved music, and that she can’t go into a music store now.
Thinking more about my question, she mentioned that with her hearing loss she has learned to depend more on God. She rests more in God. Sometimes God takes things away from us, things that we enjoy, to help us focus on Him so that we can enjoy Him more.
God has made Elaine happy and uses her in a tremendous way at the mission, in the community and in three Oaxacan prisons. She is an artist and has painted many beautiful pictures and murals that inspire everyone here at the children’s home. She received a cochlear ear implant almost three years ago and partial hearing has returned to her life. That helps her to teach art classes at the mission school. She also has a sewing talent and ministry that reaches out to poor and incarcerated women, both physically, with quilts, and spiritually, with words that flow from her compassionate and joyous heart. She glorifies Him and enjoys Him in many different ways everyday.
Thinking about Elaine and her spiritual journey, I was reminded of two different scripture passages from the book of John. One is from chapter nine, the account of the man born blind. In those days, most Jews thought that physical maladies were a result of sin. The disciples asked Jesus, “Who sinned?”
Jesus told them that the blind mans affliction was not a result of sin. He was blind all his life so that one day the master healer, Jesus himself, would come along and restore his sight, and that God would be glorified through the miracle. Surely, the man who could now see, glorified God and enjoyed Him forever.
I also thought about John 15, where Jesus speaks of God the Father as a gardener of a vineyard. Jesus says the gardener cuts off every branch that bears no fruit. It is a basic principle of horticulture that to get more, you cut more. I do most of the gardening and landscape maintenance here at the mission. While we don’t have any grape vines to prune, I am constantly pruning roses and other flowers in order to get bigger and better flowers. Lately I have been pruning some overgrown citrus trees in order to get more, high quality fruit. In the same way, God prunes things from our lives, in order that we may produce more fruit – fruit of the Spirit. In the case of John 15, the spiritual fruit in question is JOY. In verse 11, Jesus says, “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” God loves us and wants us to be happy, and many times He prunes away one aspect of our live to ultimately produce more joy fruit in our lives.
Elaine misses her ability to hear perfectly. Daily her thoughts turn toward heaven and the time that her hearing will be restored. In the meantime, she thanks God for the gifts he has given her and the compassion she is able to show others who have suffered loss.
Art
When I first met Art, he was dying of a brain tumor. He was a middle aged man, gray hair, balding. He had once been an active Episcopal priest. I met him at a Lutheran church that I had just begun attending in Northern California. As I recall, he told me a joke. He loved to tell jokes. It was hard for me to understand him, because the brain tumor had caused his speech to be a bit slurred at times. He also had trouble with his sight, and needed a cane to get around. All of this didn’t stop him from enjoying God and telling jokes.
He told me about the time he told God a joke. Immediately afterward he said he was plagued with guilt. Who was he to be joking around with the Almighty, Holy God. He was in turmoil, he told me. He prayed. He cried. He begged forgiveness. He repented. After some time in this anguished state of mind, he heard a voice. The voice said, “Art, tell me another one.”
I think that because of this experience with a God who likes to laugh at jokes, Art began bringing much joy and mirth into peoples lives by telling jokes and funny stories. It didn’t matter so much that you couldn’t always understand him or get the punch line. What mattered was, here was a man who believed that God loved him and wanted him to be happy, despite his painful circumstances. As a result of the joy he experienced, he naturally wanted to spread the joy, and the best way he knew was telling jokes and hysterical stories. After I gave Art my email address, not a week went by that I didn’t receive at least one new joke or funny story. I always laughed and thanked God for Art. I miss him.
Anita
Anita was born into poverty. She was born at home because her parents couldn’t afford a hospital. She had a brother that was stillborn. One of her sisters died at six weeks, and another who died before her tenth birthday. Her youngest brother has Downs Syndrome.
Anita is a lady who suffered much as a young girl growing up poor in Mitla, Mexico. Her parents couldn’t afford a house, so they lived with an oppressive grandmother who treated them like servants or slaves. When that environment became too much for them, they decided to move to a small piece of land they owned on the edge of town. They constructed a “house” of bamboo sticks and a tin roof. Some days all they had to eat was tortillas with a bit of salt or pumpkin seeds for flavor.
Their only hope, so it seemed, lay in the syncretistic, Catholic religion that combined Christian orthodoxy with ancient, pagan, Zapoteco traditions. They prayed to saints, built a shrine to dead loved ones, and put out offerings they couldn’t afford , to celebrate the “Day of the Dead.” All of this brought nothing to their souls by way of peace, joy and happiness.
Fortunately, protestant missionaries lived nearby, and helped Anita and her family financially by giving them jobs. More importantly, they helped spiritually by giving them the gospel, the good news, that God loved them and wanted them to be happy. One by one, Anita and her family gave their lives to Jesus. One of the happiest days of Anita’s life was when she surrendered to God and embraced His love. The burdens and oppression she had suffered all her life, lifted away. She felt light as a balloon. She felt she was floating on air. And oh the joy that flooded her soul.
Anita, The Happy Cocinera
Anita is my wife. I met her my first day at the mission. She is an incredible cook and was working in the kitchen at the time. The first thing I noticed about her was her smile and sense of humor. My Spanish wasn’t so great then, and I didn’t understand half of what she said, but I did understand that she was glorifying God by enjoying Him!
We married two years later, and she continues to light up my life, our daughter’s lives, and all those at the mission, with her cheery attitude, generous giving of herself, and her contagious sense of humor.
I thank God everyday for this ray of heavenly sunshine that He has shined in my life. I also thank God for the inspiration of Elaine and Art, people who show me how to enjoy God in the midst of unpleasant life situations. People who know that God loves them and wants them to be happy.
* * * *
“One day our Sovereign Father and Friend will allow us to grasp His reasoning. Until then, we must trust Him. He is filled with love for you and me, and He uses the things we don’t understand to bring us closer to Him.” Letter from Bob Vander Plaats to his severely disabled son – from his book Light From Lucus.
* * * *
Next blog – Happiness, A To Do List
pain – death – war
Last time I wrote that we were created to enjoy God. I wrote that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Writing that, I could hear in my mind, voices of readers making objections. People naturally asking, “If God loves us and wants us to be happy, then WHY? Why is there suffering and pain in the world? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why were more Christians tortured and killed last century, than all the other centuries put together? Why are babies born with defects? Why does God allow children to be abused? Why is there war?” The “Why’s” are many.
These questions lead to others. Is God good and loving, yet weak or powerless to prevent pain and suffering? Or, is God the almighty creator of the universe who made us and then takes an apathetic step back to see how it will all play out? Questions like these are asked everyday in a hundred different ways, and it seems that no one has the answers.
Well, never fear, friendly reader. Michael James Santiago Schwab is here. I have all the answers. In my dreams! To tell the truth, my own voice was making the same objections when I wrote about God’s love, enjoying God, and being happy. I was asking WHY? I wish I had all the answers, but of course I don’t. I live in the same world as you – a world filled with the tensions of good and evil; wholeness and brokenness; happiness and sadness; peace and conflict; joy and disappointment; success and frustration. These types of tensions confront most of us on a daily basis.
Another question. What do we do with all these tensions? Try to ignore them? Bury our heads in the sand? Put on rose colored glasses? Pray for the best, but expect the worst? Let go and let God?
Again, I don’t have the answers. All I can do is share some ideas about how I have learned to cope with these issues as they have sprung up on my spiritual journey. I hope what I have to say will encourage everyone, but undoubtedly my words will be a disappointment for some and ring hollow to others.
For me, finding the right perspective on these issues of good and evil, suffering and pain, begins with reading the Bible. I believe the Bible is God’s Word that He gives us to help us think His thoughts after Him. To open the eyes of our heart, our spiritual eyes. I think of the Bible, the Holy Scriptures, as a User’s Manual, that God has graciously given us to. He made us. He knows how we function. He explains what we need to know in the Manual. In reading, studying and meditating on the Bible, God helps me understand, a little bit more everyday, what’s going on. I get more of His perspective. Through the help of the Holy Spirit, I can see things more clearly.
One of the first things that I learn from Scripture is that having all the answers in life isn’t all that important. In fact, having all the answers is impossible. What is important in life is to trust that God loves us and wants us to be happy. That’s what the Bible says. One example- I just scanned the book of Psalms, all 150 chapters. I have read it many times, and underlined things that were important to me. Scanning all those pages and reading things I had underlined, certain words and phrases jumped out at me. Rejoice, gladness, joy, delight, steadfast love, love endures forever, rescue, compassion, forgiveness, mercy, goodness. These are the words that the writers of the Psalms use to describe God, His gifts, and their reaction to those gifts. Throughout the Bible, from the Garden of Eden in Genesis, to the New Jerusalem in Revelation, I read about a Good God who loves His people and wants them to be happy.
Job
Job and his “friends”
This is not to say that God’s people never suffer. All we have to do is to read the book of Job to see that. This book gives the account of a “blameless, upright man who feared God and shunned evil”. He was very wealthy. He was a devoted father. A picture of health. We all know the story. He lost everything in a short time. His wealth was stolen. His children died in a tragic accident. He began suffering from a horrible, painful skin disease. How did Job react? The first two chapters tell us that “Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing” and “Job did not sin in what he said.” Job 13:15 records Job as saying, “Even if God kills me, still I will trust Him.”
Naturally Job wanted to know WHY?! Why God? Why?
Towards the end of the book of Job, Job receives an audience with God. Surely he must have thought, Now God will answer my question – WHY? Guess what? God did not answer the Why Question. God proclaimed His might and power to Job. God told Job to consider the universe that He had created. God directed Job’s attention to nature, and God asked a few questions of His own. Forty-seven questions to be exact. A few examples of the questions that God asked Job –
Where were you when I laid the earths foundations?
Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place?
Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?
Can you bring forth the constellations?
Do you send the lighting bolts on their way?
Will the one who contends the Almighty correct him?
To all these questions, Job had to answer “No”, while God says, “I was there, I have done it and will continue to do it.” What God is saying to Job, and to us, is that He is all powerful. He is sovereign. He has given us a beautiful creation, and He can be trusted to do the right thing, even if we can’t see it or don’t understand it. Job never did understand, this side of eternity, why he had to suffer the way he did, but he did understand that he had to to trust in God, that He is good and that His love endures forever.
I love Psalm 103. God is pictured as a loving, compassionate father. He understands what we are going through. Why we suffer. Verse 14 says, ‘he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.” Our attitudes are dust. Our actions are dust. Our strength is dust. Our motivations are dust. As a result of all that “dust” we suffer sometimes because of our sin. We cause other people to suffer because of our sin. We suffer because of other peoples sin. Sin is the main cause of suffering, although certainly not the only cause. Despite our sin, as Psalm 103 says, “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him.” When we recognize our sin, and ask God to forgive us and restore us to a right relationship with Him, then we can be assured, as verse 12 states, “as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.”
In our times of trials, turmoil and terrible pain, we can be sure that God, our compassionate Father, is there beside us, walking with us, and at times carrying us. Ultimately we can rest assured that we will be delivered from all sorrow and suffering. Why? Because God loves us and wants us to be happy.
* * * *
“Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come;
‘Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far
and Grace will lead me home” Amazing Grace
* * * *
Next blog – Three Happy People
To Enjoy God 