Whirlwind of Change...

So, two months ago, I was simply a low-level associate traveling the roads of Virginia and looking for a way out of my job...

And now, somehow, in two months, we lost a paralegal (the other one's last day is tomorrow), my supervising attorney left for a job in Ohio, we've hired two new paralegals and I'm managing them and looking for a newer attorney who apparently I will manage as well.

It's just really bizarre to think that things can change that quickly in just a short period of time--I actually conducted a semi-interview with an attorney that interviewed with our office today. I didn't think I'd EVER do that, at least not this soon.

But certain circumstances really convinced me, even before this happened, that my time here in this job and this area is not quite done yet (my wife being pregnant, my neighbor's situation, other situations). I say "yet" because my wife and I may be nomads in some sense for the rest of our lives, only God knows (we've moved nine times in less than seven years of marriage)--but I know that His hand is in this, and He has been faithful throughout.

God's timing is always perfect, though we're not always able to trust Him leading up to the fulfillment of His faithfulness.

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I would also ask for continued prayers for my neighbor, whose wife left several weeks ago and is going down a path that grieves the Lord. Pray for repentance, reconciliation and restoration (for both of them). Pray that truth would break through and awaken her heart. My heart breaks for them both, because I know that but for the grace of God and the restraining power of the Holy Spirit such evil lurks and could manifest itself in my own heart.

God Does Not Forsake Us

Something struck me about what I read this morning in my daily Spurgeon reading and how it closely matched with the theme of the sermon that Pastor David preached this past Sunday. In his sermon, Pastor David, while reading through the end of Hebrews 10, said that oftentimes in our daily lives, we focus on the here and now, making the special grace of our salvation serve the common grace of every day blessings that God may bestow.

It is this backwards or reversed (and unbiblical) thinking that often causes us to feel abandoned by God in times of suffering.

Here's the reading from this morning:

Psalm 22:1 My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?

We here behold the Saviour in the depth of his sorrows. No other place so well shows the griefs of Christ as Calvary, and no other moment at Calvary is so full of agony as that in which his cry rends the air—"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" At this moment physical weakness was united with acute mental torture from the shame and ignominy through which he had to pass; and to make his grief culminate with emphasis, he suffered spiritual agony surpassing all expression, resulting from the departure of his Father's presence. This was the black midnight of his horror; then it was that he descended the abyss of suffering. No man can enter into the full meaning of these words. Some of us think at times that we could cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" There are seasons when the brightness of our Father's smile is eclipsed by clouds and darkness; but let us remember that God never does really forsake us. It is only a seeming forsaking with us, but in Christ's case it was a real forsaking. We grieve at a little withdrawal of our Father's love; but the real turning away of God's face from his Son, who shall calculate how deep the agony which it caused him?

In our case, our cry is often dictated by unbelief: in his case, it was the utterance of a dreadful fact, for God had really turned away from him for a season. O thou poor, distressed soul, who once lived in the sunshine of God's face, but art now in darkness, remember that he has not really forsaken thee. God in the clouds is as much our God as when he shines forth in all the lustre of his grace; but since even the thought that he has forsaken us gives us agony, what must the woe of the Saviour have been when he exclaimed, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

It is hard to imagine, hard to picture, but when Christ was on the Cross, in bearing our sins, he literally experienced a hell--separation from God. This is the same separation that will be experienced by those that will not call on the name of Christ and will not have their sins paid for. This image is the wrath of God borne by Christ with none of God's love, mercy or grace--it is an agony too hard to imagine.

When we measure our happiness and our life on the blessings and sufferings of this life, our faith has a foundation that is as firm as a sand dune, being blown and shaped by the wind. We have a season of blessing and then encounter a season of woe and suffering and we are swept away.

But we will NEVER have to experience the kind of separation that Christ endured on the cross because we as His chosen, His children, are His because Christ endured it for us, made sin for us. If we make the basis of our life--our faith--the special grace that we receive through salvation in Christ and make common grace serve this grace rather than vice-versa, then we will be further along to a peace that passes all understanding. Man was made to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, meaning not just in this life but for eternity. God may ordain us to endure cancer for the last twenty years of our life, but He has just as sure ordained that we would praise Him when we pass into glory, forever and ever.

Do They Really Want to Free Tibet?

If you've paid attention to the news at all with the upcoming Beijing Olympics, you've probably seen the protests that have been going on both in China with Tibetan monks and other Tibetans and now the protests here in America (San Francisco, specifically).

Now, I'm fully aware of China's human rights abuses and make no mistake, I'd like to make them accountable for what they have done (and are more than likely still doing). But what does that mean--how do we do that?

A few weeks ago I blogged about Mark Steyn's book, America Alone. He mentions that people have been protesting about freeing Tibet for years. In all seriousness, what has that accomplished? Slapping a bumper sticker on your car or tethering your self to the suspension cables of the Golden Gate bridge (which apparently they are doing) makes a statement, but it doesn't make Tibet any more free.

To those that protest: do you think that China will simply say in response to your protests, "you know, you're right, we shouldn't be doing that and we should free the Tibet people." Really? They won't any listen any more than if during WWII we had pleaded with Hitler to stop persecuting and killing the Jewish people during the Holocaust or with Stalin when he killed millions of his own people.

Rhetoric and protests are fine to do, but those that do that must realize that action must be taken to address the wrong--turning back through the pages of history in our own country, even to the start, did we ask the British crown nicely and they simply let us become our own country? No, we had to fight for our independence. This is what the American military is attempting to do in Iraq (whether you agree whether the war should have been waged or not in agreement with how it is being carried out)--to create a free Iraq.

Are those that protest willing to take a military force in to free Tibet? I don't think that they are--perhaps at most they would advocate a "peacekeeping" force but I doubt they would even go for that. Diplomacy has been tried for years on the human rights issue in China and while abuses may not be as obvious, they are still going on.

So, go on, keep protesting and slap your bumper stickers on your cars and do nothing more--the Olympics will pass and you will go back to what you were doing before the Olympics were approaching.

And Tibet will still not be free.

Stress Factor--Increased!

Or as my wife would say, "bummed." It turns out that I got two very disheartening pieces of news today. The sole paralegal that I spoke of in my last post gave her two weeks notice today, so in two weeks, we'll be back to status quo (not having two paralegals, but just one since we'll have trained a new one and the old one will be gone). In addition, the attorney that interviewed this week did not take the job when we offered it, and we have no more prospects lined up.

I'm really trying not to be overwhelmed with it all, but it's hard. We'll see what the weeks ahead will bring.

Stay tuned.

By the way, did I mention that my wife and I are having a baby too?