Monthly Archives: March 2011

God’s love and the Japanese earthquake and tsunami

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How can we reconcile God’s love with disasters? For a couple of weeks now, the news media have brought us new images of the disaster in Japan: the worst earthquake there on record, a tsunami that struck the coast within 15 minutes and that caused a nuclear catastrophe worse than any other except Chernobyl. We have probably all received multiple reminders to pray for Japan, and I hope this post will serve as another, but I want to consider the question of how a loving God can allow such devastation.

To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’   “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.… Read the rest

Trusting God: feelings or faith?

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Trusting God can be a struggle for the godliest people. As when Peter walked on water until he noticed the waves, the struggle comes from looking at circumstances and feelings. Even David had trouble maintaining his trust. Allow me to offer my own paraphrase of Psalm 30:6-12:

When I felt secure. When I felt secure. Was I secure, or did I just feel secure? Whatever it was, it seemed, it felt like it would last forever. But it didn’t. When life took a downturn and I didn’t feel secure any more. It felt like God had decided to hide from me.

… Read the rest

The church: the household of God

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“. . . if I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15, NIV).

Probably the first thing that comes to mind when we think of the church as “God’s household” is that Christians are God’s family. After all, household means the people who live in a house, and in our society, that’s usually a family. Indeed, God has adopted all believers into his family. But to gain a deeper understanding of Paul’s meaning, I would like to propose a different way of looking at it, not to replace the notion of the household of God as God’s family, but to enrich it.… Read the rest