Chaplain’s Corner: The Sorrow of God
“It is said of God that no one can behold his face and live. I always thought this meant that no one could see his splendor and live. A friend said perhaps it means that no one could see his sorrow and live. Or perhaps his sorrow is his splendor.” This quote by Nicholas Wolterstorff has come back to me as news reports have come out of Israel, each overwhelming and unimaginable in their horror. Images of mourning parents and dust-covered crying children. A fragile peace decimated in a matter of days in one of the most significant holy places on earth. So many innocent lives changed forever on account…
Chaplain’s Corner: God Speaks
Our Sierra View Bible Study has recently started a study of the book of Hebrews. It is a book that is rarely studied in its entirety. Perhaps this is because it is so dense, with so many references to other Old Testament texts. Perhaps it is because we know so little about its author or intended audience. Or perhaps it is because after the Gospels and Paul’s letters, our attention starts to wane a bit. The first four verses of Hebrews waste no time beginning with royal fanfare. In the original Hebrew, those four verses are one long sentence, beginning with an affirmation that God speaks. We know God, not…
Chaplain’s Corner: Blessed are the Seekers
Nothing feels better than being certain about something. In our day-to-day lives we are always looking for “clear cut” and “sure things.” It makes sense then that we would seek the same things in our spiritual lives. To our chagrin, certainty is elusive in the realm of the spiritual. Sometimes our pursuit of certainty gets us into trouble. We use it as a measure of achievement, either feeling guilty about not reaching a certain level of it, or feeling judgmental over those with reservations or doubts. There were certainly people in Jesus’ day who were certain about their faith, but those weren’t the ones Jesus called to walk alongside him.…
Chaplain’s Corner: Flipping the Script
For one week every July I leave my chaplain/pastor routine in the Valley for an entirely different experience: Camp Director for our 3rd-12th graders at Camp Keola, situated at 7500 feet at Huntington Lake. In addition to swimming, singing and s’mores, it was a week of fellowship and faith formation shaped around the theme of: “Flipping the Script.” Jesus was not the Messiah the world was anticipating. He was frustratingly non-compliant with the expectations of the world, which values strength over vulnerability, ambition over compassion, accumulation over generosity and the comfort of the individual over the flourishing of the community. Jesus flipped the script on every one of these expectations.…
Chaplain’s Corner: Beauty in Suffering
When we experience hardship and tribulation in life our tendency is to immediately question things. Question what we might have done wrong to deserve such hardship, question how a good God could allow us to experience such tribulation in the first place, question whether the universe bends towards darkness and not towards light. Questions like these, of course, assume that our well-being is a priority over all else in the universe. It is not unreasonable that we think like this. After all, Psalm 8 tells us that we are “made a little lower than the angels and crowned with glory and honor” (v5). But then again, the first three verses…
Chaplain’s Corner: Do Not Let Your Regret Define You
We all have regrets. The thoughts of what we “should have” done instead of what we did, often nibbling at the corners of our minds as we fall asleep at night or when we find ourselves in a reflective mood. Joan Chittister, in her book The Gift of Years, speaks of the two faces of regrets: the regret of our failures, and the regret of our life choices. Regretting our failures is a painful thing, but it also is a sign of growth. Whether it is injury we have caused to ourselves or to others, realizing this harm is a reminder that we have grown and matured. If the circumstances presented…
Chaplain’s Corner: Unboxing our Faith
It seems to be a fairly universal human trait to want to know exactly what goes in each box. We have a work box, we have a family box, we have a faith box and so on. This pandemic year has turned our boxes upside down into one pile in the middle of the floor and the experience has been overwhelming to say the least. The box we guard most closely and tend to be most protective of however, is our faith box. We like things a certain way and we like them predictable. There has been nothing predictable about church this last year, which has ranged from distanced indoors…
Chaplain’s Corner: Struck Down But Not Destroyed
As this year wraps up not many of us are sad to see it go. It has been a year none of us anticipated a year ago when we excitedly watched the ball drop on New Years Eve. COVID has cast a shadow on almost every part of our lives this year, from our health, to our relationships, to our finances to our politics. Entering a new year we find ourselves unsure of how to feel. Glued to the news cycle we are continually warned that the worst is always still coming and that we are left to helplessly watch as the country and the economy circle the drain. On…
Chaplain’s Corner: Pyramid Schemes
Our culture has an unhealthy view of aging. We draw the trajectory like a pyramid. Everything is looking up until midlife, and then it is all downhill from there. It is no wonder we are conditioned to see life like this, considering our disproportionate value on sexuality and productivity. But scripture paints a different picture. The psalms talk of flourishing in old age. Not the kind of flourishing that comes with competitive athletics and managing a financial empire, but one that is steeped in the wisdom that can be nurtured through knowledge and life experience. Scripture abounds with stories of God calling people late in life. Much later than…
Chaplain’s Corner: Amazing Grace
I have always loved how the Bible informs us of its heroes’ shortcomings right alongside their heroic feats without batting an eye. I was reminded of this again as we have worked our way through the story of Moses in our weekly Chats with the Chaplain. When Moses stumbles upon the burning bush he is watching over sheep for his father-in-law. Why? Because fourteen verses earlier he fled for his life after he had killed a man! Certainly, if anyone should ever be disqualified from leading God’s chosen people, it should be Moses. This is not an isolated incident. God works like this all the time. Jacob cheated his brother…
