Imaginary Strawberries (and other disasters)

         I could hear the sobbing from down the hall; my daughter was clearly heartbroken.  As I ran to comfort her, to push aside her anguish and replace it with the massive onslaught of a fatherly hug, I asked her what was wrong.  By the size of her monstrous tears, I immediately guessed that some small bone of hers must be broken, or at the least some treasured doll had been digested by the dog.  Instead, she looked down limply and wailed,

“I don’t have any more strawberries!!!”

    Now, a word clarification: this catastrophe occurred in February, and our house had not hosted strawberries of any sort since last summer.  Yet, in my three-year-old’s amazingly-vivid imagination, a lack of imaginary strawberries was as disastrous as any Japanese tsunami. 

    Wanting to quiet this surging, blubbering tide, I quickly reached into my pocket and offered a fistful of air that I desperately hoped would be accepted as imaginary fruit.  While suppressing the rising grin that threatened to undermine a daughter’s trust in her Daddy’s sympathy, I said, “Here, sweetie, I have some strawberries for you.”  Apparently, however, my imagination was insufficient to adequately create new strawberries, and the meltdown continued until I suggested we forget the strawberries completely and go play a riveting game of “Candy Land” – a proposition that was gleefully accepted.    

      Unfortunately for most of us, what troubles us the most is far from imaginary.  We have no need to invent devastation, as our lives are often full of all-too-real storms.  For some, the storm involves a sudden and unwanted education about an evil disease.  For others, it has been born on the winds of a declining economy.  Some may simply have been awakened to the fact that their life is not as they had planned, and that they’ve spent more time trying to survive the storms than chasing their dreams. 

     None of us, however, have ever faced a storm quite like the one that was quickly approaching a young carpenter from Nazareth.  Every step that He took carried Him closer not only to certain death, but the unimaginable suffering of bearing the whole world’s sin.  And unlike the sudden traumas that often assault us, Jesus knew full-well the scope of this impending storm even before He first visited Bethlehem.  He knew of the opposition that would arise, of the betrayal that would occur, of the torture, of the nails, and of the death.

     And above all the impending suffering was the inescapable destiny of being forsaken by God the Father.  Nailed to a tree, cursed by men and demons alike, Jesus took upon Himself a massive guilt – the tremendous burden of every sin ever committed. And in so doing, His fellowship with God the Father was severed.  For the Son of God, nothing could have been more devastating. 

     As for us, even though it was our sins that put Christ on the cross, even though it might as well have been our hands that bore the hammer, His tremendous sacrifice does not add to our guilt.  Instead it actually does quite the opposite.  Jesus freely took our sins from us, and thus has provided us with the greatest possible gift: restoration.  Through Him, sinners like us are redeemed and restored to right standing before the Father.  By being forsaken, Christ secured our adoption. 

      But, like my daughter, we have to accept the free gift from our Father (whose gift, I should point out, is far greater than a fistful of air!).  The exchange from sinful rebellion to forgiven restoration is not complete until we accept and believe that Jesus was who He said He was and that He did indeed die for us.  Thankfully, though, this call to belief is not really a call to blind faith.  Instead, it is based upon the single most important evidence in history:

an empty grave.

     We can know for sure that Jesus is both fully God and fully man because He not only died, He was resurrected.  We can know for sure that His sacrifice is sufficient to remove our guilt and our sins because He has the power over death itself.  We can know for sure that His gift of redemption, His gift of grace, His gift of salvation is true because He proved His own deity on that first Easter. 

      And we can know for sure that Jesus is with us even when we lose all our strawberries. He has proven that He is alive, and when we trust in Him, no storm we will ever face will be too powerful, too traumatic, or too catastrophic.  His sufficient grace will strengthen, sustain, comfort, guide, and heal everyone who follows after Him.  The ironic beauty of the cruel cross is that Jesus provides not only the future hope of eternal life, but the present peace and joy of abundant life.  Eternal and abundant life: far better than even the best game of “Candy Land.”  

Soli Deo Gloria

Tim Cotten

Hard Questions...

“God is love.”

1 John 4:16

         Every now and then, a question comes along that is so profound in its implications that all of life seems to pause while an answer is pondered.  This happened recently to me while watching cartoons with my daughter.  Though I’ve been familiar with them for years, I suddenly realized that both Goofy and Pluto are dogs, yet one was a talking character and the other merely a pet.  How could this be?!  My mind reeled in a futile attempt to comprehend this animated conundrum. 

     This is not the first query to cause such internal turmoil.  Many moments have been spent considering such things like why someone would put an ‘s’ in the word “lisp.” Or what exactly a “turvy” refers to in the phrase “topsy-turvy.”  Or whether or not an individual player for the Boston Red Sox’s should be identified as a “Red Sock.”  And this doesn’t even include more profound questions like, “Did Adam have a navel?” or “Where did Seth get his wife?”

      Yet there is one question that plagues any serious thought about God.  Indeed this question is so deeply profound that it has often been labeled “the problem of evil,” and is one of the chief causes of doubt in the existence of God.   In a nutshell, the question is:

Why does God allow evil?

Nearly everyone agrees that evil exists, both in “natural” forms (cancer, earthquakes, etc.) and “moral” forms (murder, rape, etc.).  Now, if God is who He says He is, if He is real, if He is all-loving, if He is all-powerful, and if He is all-knowing, then we have a serious problem.  He has the desire, the means, and the knowledge to stop all forms of evil, and yet He does not do it.  Why?!

     While a comprehensive treatment of this profound question cannot be covered here, on a basic level, the answer is: Love.   At first glance, this may seem like nonsense.  “Evil exists because of love?”  Well, yes.  Please let me explain…

     A couple of years ago, as our daughter Micah was first learning to speak, my wife and I taught her to open her arms up wide and say, “I love you this much.”  Occasionally we would prompt her, and Micah would dutifully (and usually cheerfully) perform the phrase on cue, much to the delight of the nearest grandparent.  Micah’s little act was precious, even though we all knew that she didn’t really understand what she was saying. 

     Fast forward a couple of years, and Micah has developed into a little girl who sincerely loves her family.  Every so often, she’ll come over to one of us, open up her arms as wide as they’ll go, and exclaim gleefully “I love you THIIIIIIIIS much!”  Unprompted, unrehearsed, un-coerced… just a natural expression of a little heart that explodes with compassion and love for those around her.

      As her father, I thoroughly enjoyed seeing her as a toddler imitate our actions.  The cuteness was nearly unbearable.  But what truly melts my heart is when she comes, on her own free will, to tell me that she loves me.  That is real love. 

      You see, God could have created us to be puppets; merely repeating the commands of the master.  We could have been robots – programmed only to do certain tasks.  We could have been programmed to praise God, to do good things, and to live holy lives.  But something would have been missing.  Any “love” that we might have shown would have been hollow – no more sincere than when Micah’s favorite doll squeaks “I love you.”   

      Instead, God knew that any true expression of love must include free will – the capacity to choose.  This however, is where evil comes in.  Ultimately, God allows evil because He loves us enough to give us the freedom of choice.  And, beginning with Adam, we have all chosen poorly.  A long history of natural and moral evil has been the result. 

      While the necessity of choice helps explain why God allows evil, there is another reason.  Personally, I would love for my children to grow up in a perfectly sheltered environment – free from all scrapes, bumps, skinned-knees, and other tragedies.  I would like to totally protect them from the evil that’s in this world.  Yet that type of absolute-shielding is not what my girls need most.  They need to learn how to live well in spite of evil.  Ultimately, my job is not to totally protect them, but to train them.

      Likewise, God is more glorified when we learn to love Him in spite of evil – when we worship Him in the midst of hardship.  Indeed, God did not totally shield His own Son from evil, but used it to achieve something far greater. 

      While it is perfectly acceptable to ask for God’s continued protection against evil, I pray that ultimately we might learn the greater lesson that Christ has taught us all – to open up our arms as wide as they’ll go and say to our Lord, “I love you thiiiiiis much!”  After all, that's exactly what He did for us.

Soli Deo Gloria

Tim Cotten