BCP 481 & Mark 9:24

Two books, two books I’m reading, I’ve nearly always liked having more than one open and being consumed at a time, maybe like steak and eggs or a seafood platter of oysters, shrimp, &c. Currently as well as working slowly through A Gentleman in Moscow I’m reading Head Ball Coach: My Life in Football by Steve Spurrier. A Gator before most other things that came along in life, my all time favorite coach is Steve Spurrier even above Bo Schembechler and Jim Harbaugh. His book is personal, personable and charming. And when I finish, Amy is going to get him to sign it for me.

Busy this morning, first official nonSabbatical day after my first sabbatical of all time. It was good, I may do it again sometime. Or not. 

A cousin died this week, Eleanor, daughter of Margaret, first cousin on my mother’s side. I never knew Eleanor, who lived all her life in Texas, but I grew up with cousins Margaret and Bill Gentry, to me about as close as brother and sister through our growing up years, and I’m sad that such a loss has come, for a second time, to someone I have loved in life. A question in mind is always, not what happens to us at death, which is the Creator’s domain, but why? and how do those who are left behind go on in the anguish of such desolating loss? It comes upon almost everyone, and I have no more answer than does everyone else who comes up against what theologians and others call the question of theodicy: how could it be that we are left to suffer such unbearable pain in the world of a merciful and loving God? There are rationalizations, b.s. to let God off the hook, but there are no answers, so much so are there are no answers that the question shifts to Who, Where, What is God? and for many to Is God? But my question is "what is God not?" What is our omniscient, almighty, gracious, merciful, tender and loving God not, that we have believed? We do not know. And our prayer becomes,

Help us, we pray, in the midst of things we cannot understand,

to believe and trust in the communion of saints, the forgiveness

of sins, and the resurrection to life everlasting.

I believe: help thou mine unbelief.


HNEC & PB407