Positive Faith in Scripture: God Protects

Don’t fear, because I am with you;

don’t be afraid, for I am your God.

I will strengthen you,

I will surely help you;

I will hold you

with my righteous strong hand.

Isaiah 41:10, CEB

Yesterday we started unpacking some of God’s positive attributes (compassion, mercy, patience, love)- knowing these things is really going to inform and shape our ability to have a “positive faith.”

Another of these traits is God’s protection and his desire to help. In a culture that has talked way too much about the bad things God wants to do to you (not true, by the way), it’s hard to imagine that God’s desire, truly, is to be helpful.

Time and again scripture speaks to God’s desire to strengthen his people, to work through them when they’re too exhausted to do the work themselves, to hold them up when they can’t stand.

He is not a God who desires to harm- nor is he distant. His desire is to give his people everything they need to keep moving in the direction of compassion, mercy, patience, and love.

A Glimmer of Light…

“We get to the beauty through the brutal. Not over or around or under but straight through. We do not ignore each other’s pain - we help carry it.”

Glennon Doyle

I used to think that the best way to manage pain was to super-spiritualize it. Be hopeful! Be positive! Remind myself of all those sayings I have heard all my life about God and suffering. Then I studied the scriptures. The dissonance was shocking. It gave me the same feeling as an ice cream headache.

I read the laments - full on works of suffering, grief, mourning and loss. The writer was going THROUGH pain. He (I assume) even had the temerity to question God about his suffering - much like Job. What’s going on here, I thought? The few “friends'' who tried to correct Job’s theology ultimately received the harshest critique from God - not Job!

I’ve got a lot of unlearning to do. I’ve worn deep ruts around tough topics, suffering, and grief. I’ve tried to tippy toe around them and not get caught in their sticky web. I’ve tried to comfort the comfortless. Why? Was I simply trying to relieve my own anxiety? Was I parroting others, assuming they must be right about the nature of loss?

Straight through. Like the psalmists; on we march. God with us. That truth is amazing enough right there. We need no fancy stories or justifications or blaming to deal with suffering.

God with us.

God with us.

God with us.

There it is; there is the glimmer of light in darkness.