Thank you, Julie. for the teacup parable. Simple but profound. It started me thinking about the way God has taught me different things over the years as he was molding and shaping, and polishing. (Still is, actually!)1. How at 18 our lovely, self-satisfied, safe, comfortable family was shattered when my brother died in WW 2 in June, and the following November, my Dad. I remember how I clung to the Psalms, and verses like, "The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord." (His accident was stepping back on a loose board.) I was finding out the miraculous, living, power of the Scripture.2. Learning to get along with a husband who was so totally different from me. Having to learn I couldn't have it my way all the time, and to try to live to make another person happy, not me, me, me.3. Shelleys's birth with an abnormal hand, and finding out God could be wonderfully sufficient for her, and in the process bless us all.4. Christopher's diagnosis of autism, and then Jeanne's breast cancer. Oh my, God was doing so much shaping and molding in so many ways, (too many lessons to list), but finding God make His presence so real and so loving you could almost touch Him--how could your faith and confidence in Him not grow?5. Shelleys' divorce----again so much pain, but so amazing how God once again was sufficient, and powerful to work it out for good in so many ways, with a minimum of "scars" --- "beauty for ashes" instead. Makes us pray hard for Mary--we know what God can do!6. Then the more recent "shaping and molding"--Ward's illness and then my coping alone --- Oh my, the faithfulness of God is overwhelming-- defies finding the language for it all, as David says, "Some things are too lofty for me" ---"How wonderful are your thoughts and your ways past finding out"..Jeanne's RA diagnosis, Of course, mine and Shelley's big C in one year---It is hard to analyze just what God was doing in each of these cases, and how he is still working on that teacup-- but it was good to anticipate that He is making something beautiful out of that pitiful lump of clay, as only He can. I surely can't, no matter how hard I may try.Love, MOM
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
From Mom-Mom
On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 9:10 AM, Mary Nelle wrote:
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Thank you for your comments, Mom-mom. The teacup analogy means a lot to Liz and me right now with what we've been going through, the tumultuous ups and downs and all the questions of "WHY?" Still must admit we are in the "What is God doing?" phase rather than the "Oh, that!" phase, but that makes us all the more appreciative of these kinds of reminders.
I've been reading Lewis' "The Problem of Pain," and early on he tackles the subject of God's goodness, the age-old question, "How can God be good with so much misery in the world?" Here are some passages that have stuck out to me.
"By the goodness of God, we mean nowadays almost exclusively His lovingness... And by Love, most of us mean kindness, the desire to see others happy. We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven - a senile benevolence... whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, 'a good time was had by all.' ... I should very much like to live in a universe governed on such lines. But since it is abundantly clear that I don't, and since I have reason to believe, nevertheless, that God is Love, I conclude that my conception of love needs correction."
"There is 'kindness' in Love, but Love and kindness are not coterminous, and when kindness is separated from the other elements of Love, it involves a certain fundamental indifference to its object... We have all met people whose kindness to animals is constantly leading them to kill animals lest they should suffer. Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering. As Scripture points out, it is bastards who are spoiled: the legitimate sons, who are to carry on the family tradition, are unpunished."
"We are, not metaphorically but in very real truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character. ... Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his life -- the work which he loves -- he will take endless trouble -- and would, doubtlessly, thereby GIVE endless trouble to the picture if it were sentient. One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and recommenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumbnail sketch whose making was over in a minute. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed us for a less than glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are not wishing for more love but less."
Lots more in that chapter I could post here, but this is just a sampling!
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