<html><body><div>Here's the second part for Sunday.</div><div><br></div><div>Blessings!</div><div><br></div><div>Bob</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>We sigh, we cry, we hold our
breaths, our minds stop taking in the human cost and the apparent hopelessness
created by human greed, and power-wielding, and, yes, stupidity.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Yet the prophet discovered that even
where there seems to be such devastation and impoverishment of the human
spirit, even when whole villages, towns, states are being wiped out; even in
West Mosul, and in Sudan, and in South Sudan, and in Yemen – the prophet discovered
that wherever we think that no solution can be found; even there, in the depths
of misery and chaos, God stands present. God will not, God can not be
overwhelmed. God’s love can not be obliterated – by God or by anyone else.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>These are, perhaps, the sort of
scenes and situations of which the prophet lamented.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“I can’t do anything, God. The
situation is impossible: the pain, the grief, the thoughtlessness, or worse,
the deliberate cruelty; God, life seems so utterly hopeless. I can’t go on!”</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But, if there’s one thing that the
Psalms teach us, it’s that yelling when we experience all the crises of our
lives is not only O.K. It’s expected! God wants us, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>NOT</u></b> to feel depressed or overwhelmed, but, when we <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>DO</u></b> feel overwhelmed, God wants
to hear how we feel. God always wants to have us feel that we can express our
feelings, because then God and we, working together, and with others around us,
can look to see what responses can be made.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Nowhere is it suggested that God
wants us to do nothing. Nowhere is it suggested that God wants those feelings
and experiences to be papered over either. God knows that we <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>HAVE</u></b> to struggle in order to
meet the daily challenges, and to mask that in any way simply postpones the
task of dealing with whatever we’re facing, and it will exacerbate the problem.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>God didn’t blind the eyes of Ezekiel
or the heart of the psalmist. Ezekiel saw the terror of all those skeletons
reaching to the horizon; the psalmist felt so oppressed by the weight of
everything going on that neither of the two felt that there was anything which
could possibly bring salvation and renewal to their lives, individually and as
a community.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It all looked so hopeless</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Where is God, we all cry, when
someone we love dies, or is severely wounded in a car wreck, or in a terrorist
attack, or in government-induced disease, famine, and drought by the
withholding of basic supplies? Where are you, God? If only You’d make Yourself
known, and pay attention to what’s happening. Oh, God! Why?!</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Just as Martha and Mary cried out –
why, Jesus? Why were You not here? Why do you come when there’s food to share,
and stories to tell, and laughter to last long into the night? Why are you
there then and You’re not around when Lazarus and we need You?</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It’s not just Martha and Mary berating
Jesus either. We <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>ALL</u></b> do it,
in one way or another.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>So what’s the answer?</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Well, every time this question comes
up throughout our Holy Scriptures, as we see in the passages today; every time
the question comes up, God/Jesus <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>IS</u></b>
there in one way or another, and we’re told <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>NOT</u></b> to refuse to deal with our darkness, or to try to ignore
it. For if we fail to ask the hard questions we may not find the answer that
God has prepared for us in which to participate. And the answer indeed may
involve dealing with stench, with unpleasantness, even with the admission that
someone <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>CAN</u></b> and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>WOULD</u></b> be able to be the agent to
remind us of the Presence of God.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The Good News is that even when the
stench of what surrounds us is enough to make us gag; even when the physical
pain is enough to paralyse us; even when the emotional beating we’re
experiencing has us at the bottom of the deepest hole there is; even there, as
the psalmist points out, even there You are there, O God.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>When our brother, our sister, our
child, our parent is threatened with calamity; when we ourselves find that
we’ve reached the absolute end of our rope and darkness descends about us,
suffocating sounds which might remind us of the world and people around us;
even there, as Ezekiel found, as the psalmist found, as Martha and Mary and
their neighbours found; even at the point where we feel there’s nothing at all;
even there, there is the hope of the promise of hope.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>At no point in our lives are we
separat3ed from the Love of God.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>One of the metaphors given in our
Lenten discussion programme talked about people being in the dark, and the
person who described the situation said that she could be used by God as the
switch that brings light to whatever, to whomever is despairing.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>This Presence of God; this inspiration
by God to encourage us to turn on the switch for ourselves and for others; this
is what Ezekiel, and the psalmist, and Jesus tell us is present for us.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>We can bring life through God
working through us. We can bring hope. We can experience this for ourselves as
much as for others. We can make this a vital part of our lives and, equally
importantly, we can make this vital, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>AND
PRACTICAL,</u></b> for countless others.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In the dark of our lives, it may be
difficult to find that switch. But it <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>IS</u></b>
there. It’s <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>ALWAYS</u></b> there.
That’s a promise from God!</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'> </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>NOTE:</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'> </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style='margin: 0px; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>[1]</span></span></span></span></span><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><a href="http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55841"><span style="background: white; margin: 0px; color: blue;">http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55841</span></a><span style="background: white; margin: 0px; color: black;"> </span></span></p>
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