The lyrics take you through all that life has to offer and even refers to the gospel but ends with a “been there, done that” refrain
In my effort over the past number of blogs is this whole issue about “trying to feel God,” there are possibly two conclusions that I would like to present, with some help.
1st conclusion - one way or the other, as we live we will be broken; we will have to be broken. We will be broken by a lie or by the truth.
Even Jesus embodied and very dramatically showed this certainty in one very significant choice. When He came face to face with the cross, He knew what lay before Him, and He knew that any path He chose was going to deeply wound Him. An anguished cry came from within Him indicating how He felt at that moment.
He asked His disciples to stay close to Him. He needed their nearness. Why? He certainly was not afraid of the physical pain. He could face that. It was the knowledge and the feeling of being abandoned by even God the Father while at the same time being in the centre of God’s will. In an effort to forestall the rupture with His Father, Jesus could have walked away from that sacrifice, but in so doing He would have actually ended up being alienated from His Father’s will and heart. By choosing to die and endure that momentary separation He was drawn completely into the bosom of the Father. Putting it differently, He had a choice – to resist the cross and leave the world a broken place, or else to be broken Himself so that the world might be drawn near and live. In that death and separation from the consolation of His Father, He was able to bring us who were far off into the embrace of God. That cross on which our Lord was broken, where He took our sin and suffering, where He took our alienation, where He was abandoned by all, that cross is at the heart of the gospel.
If it is properly understood and surrendered to, the cross cannot just merit a “been there, done that, didn’t work” kind of feeling.
As a person employed in engaging the Christian community to support charitable activity around the world, I can truly say that an appeal during the Easter season that mentions the cross at all, receives little response from this same community. They don't mind the resurrection, but the cross is so offensive, even to the Christian community. We need to grasp this message before we lose its power in our lives to live our lives for Christ - passionately.
2nd conclusion -even the skeptics, somewhere deep in their own hearts, that even when they are witness to the most evil expressions of life, God must be somewhere within reach.
I worked Dennis Ngien at Tyndale Seminary and enjoyed him first as a preacher and then as an author. Christianity Today published one of his articles, The God Who Suffers - http://www.ctlibrary.com/print.html?id=1027
Here is a short paragraph to end my thoughts -
Elie Wiesel, Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, never shrinks from saying that the opposite of love is not hatred but indifference. If God were indifferent, he could not love. This is made plain in Wiesel's story about the hanging of two Jewish men and a youth in a Nazi concentration camp. All the prisoners, Wiesel included, were paraded before the gallows to witness this horrifying spectacle. "The men died quickly, but the death throes of the youth lasted for half an hour. 'Where is God? Where is he?' someone asked behind me. As the youth still hung in torment in the noose after a long time, I heard the man call again, 'Where is God?' And I heard a voice in myself answer: 'Where is he? He is here. He is hanging there on the gallows.' " Any other answer would be blasphemy, says Jurgen Moltmann.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxhyVVkHaBY
