Life is short. What
point is there in life if there is no hope and no joy? Why does God make such a big deal of human
beings when we leave so little mark on the world? Job can't find answers to these
questions. The existential dilemma of
the meaning of life becomes more sharply focused in suffering. If this is all there is, suffering and pain,
Job says, there is no point in not making that complaint known and there is
certainly no sense prolonging the misery.
Who would wish for long life if it were nothing more than pain and
suffering? Was Job asking such questions
before all the calamities? CS Lewis
wrote, “We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to.
God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in
our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” Sometimes pain is the way God gets us to ask
the right and important questions. Even
good men need to live for the right things.
Jesus doesn't respond to His brothers' logic. They believe that if He wants to be someone
He should go to the feast of Booths in Jerusalem. This festival follows Yom Kippur and
celebrates God's goodness and provision to the people in the wilderness. The brothers are going up to Jerusalem and
Jesus plans to remain in Galilee.
Ultimately, He does go up to the festival but not at the suggestion of
His brothers. Like the wedding at Cana
in John 2, Jesus moves to a different rhythm, the movement of the Spirit. When we listen to the Spirit telling us to
move, we may look inconsistent to the world, our lives and our plans are His,
and we may not know in advance where the Spirit will lead us. Living by the Spirit is how we know our lives
have meaning and purpose, they have that purpose given by God to do as He
wills.
Cornelius and Peter both receive visions from the Lord. Cornelius experiences terror when he sees an
angel of the Lord. The good news is that
the Lord has heard his prayers and that he is to fetch a man named Peter from
Joppa who is staying with a tanner named Simon who lives near the sea. That is a very specific set of descriptions,
especially when you note that the reason for fetching Peter isn't at all
clear. Cornelius has enough sense to
obey this angel and sends a delegation to Joppa. Meanwhile, next day, while that delegation is
traveling, Peter receives a vision of his own that throws over the dietary laws
of Israel. Peter's initial reaction is
to refuse this vision for he has never transgressed the laws of clean and
unclean with respect to diet. He is told
that the Lord has made all things clean and the vision is repeated three times
in order to impress its validity. Peter
had to be left wondering what the heck this had to do with anything at this
point.
No comments:
Post a Comment