Suffering Archives - Desert Warrior Ministries

“Everything Matters” – Seeking Jerusalem – Day 28

June 16, 2020

I remember the day that I finally understood my Mother.

She was a strong woman that was a teenager during the Second World War in Holland. Apparently she ran errands for the Resistance on her bike but she wouldn’t talk about it much. Something happened. We don’t know much about that time of her life. At least I don’t. But she met my Dad who was working in a shop and they got married, had two kids in Holland and then decided to emigrate to Canada in 1953.

Mom had a difficult character anyway, but life was hard and that didn’t make things any easier. On top of that, she ended up having eight kids in total. The house was always full. I remember one Thanksgiving Day dinner when we were all sitting at a long table in our house at 6 Bond St. The table was full of food and Mom had just placed the heavy turkey in the middle of the spread when the table collapsed and everything came crashing down. What a surprise!

“Suffering and Glory” – Seeking Jerusalem – Day 26

June 7, 2020

I have an idea for a book (and maybe a movie) called A Glimpse of Glory.

It’s the story of a black worship leader who loses his sister to a mugging gone wrong and she is stabbed and killed. Of course this creates a crisis of faith and he goes into a tailspin of grief and guilt which leads him into a frantic search for his sister’s killer. He ends up one night in the very same bar, nursing a drink and wondering what he is doing with his life. He decides to leave and try to get his life back on track but, first, he has to go to the bathroom.

On the way to relieve himself, he feels a knife pressed into his back and a voice in his ear telling him to step outside through the back door. Once in the alley behind the bar, his assailant demands all of his money, using his knife as a warning and a motivation to hurry.

“No Condemnation” – Seeking Jerusalem – Day 23

May 10, 2020

“I believe that God is love and that I am a good guy and it will all work out in the end.”

My friend, John, was talking and he was serious. He had been a member of our church for years. He was over 80 years old and still of sound body and mind. But not of spirit. I had asked him why he did not leave the Catholic church and become an official member of our church.

“No, no, I can’t leave the Catholic Church. I would be excommunicated,” he insisted.

“The Good Fight” – Seeking Jerusalem – Day 22

May 3, 2020

“The problem with Christianity is that it’s hard,” my friend was saying. “I totally get what Paul is saying here in this passage.” He paused. “Most times I feel like a “wretched man.” And I don’t like it. Not one bit.”

“Is that why you’ve decided to leave the church?” I asked quietly.

He nodded, his head hanging, not wanting to look at me.

“What does your wife think?” I prodded just a bit.

Silence.

“The Plan” – Seeking Jerusalem – Day 1

June 1, 2019

Jesus did not use parables to teach them about the cross, he spoke plainly. It was his life that would be the lesson, his experience that would be their teacher. The Way of the Cross is always so. It is clear and plain and needs no fancy words. It is a path which we must walk, not endlessly discuss. It is the dust of the road on the way to Jerusalem that is the aroma of real life.

The question is…and always has been…will we follow?

“The Road to Jerusalem” – Seeking Jerusalem – Day 50

April 4, 2018

When my daughter was 12 years old, she was full of curiosity. And she would ask very good questions too. But she didn’t always like the answers.

“Why is God hiding?” she would ask. “Why doesn’t he protect me from hurting myself. Doesn´t he love me?” “If God loves the whole world, why doesn’t he just get rid of hell and let everyone go to heaven?” Those were the good questions.

But she had other questions as well. “Who was Cain’s wife?” “Who created God?” and “What is heaven like?”

Obviously, we had a lot of talks together coming home from school, walking in the park, sitting in my office.

“Hanna’s Secret” – Seeking Jerusalem – Day 46

March 23, 2018

Do you remember the book called The Secret by Rhonda Byrne that they also made a movie out of? It was really popular for a while and promoted what they called The Law of Attraction which claims that thinking positively about something can make it appear in your life. A dubious idea at best. It was clothed with some religious language (ask, believe, and receive) and fits well into the Prosperity Gospel that has swept through the American churches in recent years. It sold 20 million copies at least and was translated into more than 50 languages. Rhonda Byrne certainly attracted a lot of money and fame into her life.

“The Helper” – Seeking Jerusalem – Day 45

March 22, 2018

Frederick Buechner, in his book Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale, tells us that the world of the gospel is “a world of magic and mystery, of deep darkness and flickering starlight It is a world where terrible things happen and wonderful things too It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos, in a great struggle where often it is hard to be sure who belongs to which side because appearances are endlessly deceptive. Yet for all its confusion and wildness, it is a world where the battle goes ultimately to the good, who live happily every after….

That is the fairy tale of the Gospel with, of course, one crucial difference from all other fairy tales, which is that the claim made for it is that it is true, that it not only happened once upon a time but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still” (quoted in The Sacred Romance p. 46).

“Spiritual Sin” – The Holiness Project – Day 8

March 21, 2018

We have been talking about the Sanctification Gap, that chasm between the holiness and perfect love of God as seen in His justice and mercy on the one hand, and the depths of our sin, our selfishness, our inability to love ourselves, much less God or anyone else on the other. That Sanctification Gap continues even after we have been justified by grace through the blood of Jesus Christ. In fact, precisely because it is a substitution, that it isn’t our righteousness, the gap exists because we are not made immediately perfect in love. Our Sanctification is progressive. But that gap between our Justification and our Sanctification also creates a credibility gap, both in our own eyes as well as in the eyes of other people. And so it should. It is a necessary part of our situation as Christians.

“Spiritual Perspective” – The Holiness Project – Day 9

March 20, 2018

This little story is making the rounds on the internet and on facebook. I love it. It’s a wonderful way to describe our situation as we live in darkness and grow and prepare for our delivery. It is very well done. But the metaphor isn’t perfect and I would like to improve it a little bit. Let’s talk about the umbilical cord….
So, the two babies are there in the womb but one has an umbilical cord and is fed by her mother but the other one is dead and withered in the womb (but still able to talk and discuss and “pretend” that it is alive when it is really quite dead). The metaphor is already starting to get ugly but it is closer to the truth.

Desert Warrior Ministries

Tag: Suffering