Illustration: Someone sent me an e-mail this week entitled "Thanks for your e-mails in 2004". It wasn’t really in response to my e-mails, but deals with the volumes of e-mails that are passed from person to person. Here’s what the thank you letter says: (4) "Thanks to everyone who sent me such important emails in 2004! It’s so great that you included me in your quest to inform:
Because of all of you I stopped drinking Coca-Cola after I found out from you that it’s good for removing toilet stains. I no longer drink Pepsi or Dr. Pepper since the people who make these products are atheists who refuse to put "Under God" on their cans.
I stopped going to the movies for fear of sitting on a needle infected with a disease. I smell awful, but thank goodness I stopped using deodorant because you said it causes cancer. I no longer use Saran wrap in the microwave because it causes cancer.
I don’t leave my car in any parking lot even though I sometimes have to walk about seven blocks, because you said that someone might drug me with a perfume sample and then try to rob me. I no longer receive packages from UPS or FedEx since they are actually Al Qaida in disguise. I no longer shop at Target since they are French and don’t support our American troops
I also stopped answering the phone because you said that they will ask me to dial a stupid number and then I get a high phone bill with calls to Uganda, Singapore, Tokyo and maybe the Mars Rover. I stopped eating chicken and hamburgers because you told me they are nothing more than horrible mutant freaks with no eyes or feathers that are bred in a lab so that places like McDonald’s can sell their Big Macs.
I also stopped drinking anything out of a can - you said that I will get sick from the rat faeces and urine. When I go to parties, I now don’t mix with anybody - you said that someone will take my kidneys and leave me taking a nap in a bathtub full of ice.
However, the police are also after me at present because you said not to pull over as they could be fake policemen trying to kidnap me. I no longer buy expensive cookies from Neiman Marcus since I now have their recipe. I no longer worry about my soul because I have 363,214 angels looking out for me. I no longer have any savings because I gave it to a sick girl who is about to die in the hospital (for the 1,387,258th time). I went bankrupt from bounced checks that I wrote, in anticipation of the $15,000 that Microsoft and AOL were supposed to send me when I participated in their special e-mail program. It’s weird, though, that my new free cell phone never arrived, and neither did the passes for my paid vacation to Disneyland. But I am positive that all this is because of the chain I broke or the one I forgot to follow and I got a curse. OOPS I ALMOST FORGOT, IMPORTANT NOTE:
If you don’t send this e-mail to at least 1200 people in the next ten seconds, a bird will make a deposit on you tomorrow. The fleas of a thousand camels will infest your armpits. I know this will occur because it actually happened to a friend of a friend of a friend ......
If you’ve ever done "e-mail" I trust that you have all had a "friend" who have sent you one of those messages. 99.9% of which have no bearing on real life, especially amidst current world events. In the wake of the Tsunami, do you find yourself asking "where was God?" Or "Why did God allow this to happen?" I heard one survivor, a Brittish woman being interviewed, and the reporter asked "How do you see God in all this?". The woman said "I find myself asking God, why?" She went on to say, "Though I may never know the answer, it is still okay to ask Him why?"
Web Columnists Joan Ryan writes "In the aftermath of the southern Asia tsunami that took more than 150,000 lives, people ask: "Why did this horror happen? Why did God allow it?’’ I hesitate to raise the questions at all, knowing the answers will raise only more questions. But an event of this scale -- biblical, some have said -- has even nonreligious people grappling with the nature of God and the purpose of suffering." (1)
I found weblogger after weblogger who was asking this question. Too many to search and too many to document. One weblogger was called the "MessyChristian" (2). I’m not sure I even wanted to ask the story behind that name. Max Lucado deals with the question in his book "Eye of the Storm" ((c) 1991). Job has just lost everything but his wife. Even she tells him to "curse God and die". The young minister Elihu appears and offers little to no comfort with his words. "Job slowly tunes him out and slides lower and lower under the covers. His head hurts. His eyes burn. His legs ache. Yet the question still hasn’t been answered: "God, why is this happening to me?" So God speaks. "Out of the thunder he speaks. Out of the sky, eh speaks. For all of us who would put ditto marks under Job’s question and sign our anmes to it, he speaks.
* For a ftaher who holds a rose taken off his sons coffin, he speaks.
* For the wife who holds a flag taken off her husbands casket, he speaks.
* For the couple wiht the barren womb and the fervernt prayers, he speaks.
* For any person who has tried to see God through shattered glass, he speaks.
...God’s voice thunders in the room..." and Job has an encounter with the God who "commands the morning to appear and caused the dawn to rise in the East". (3)
But I want to ask a different question: "What if God wants our attention?" I know, its shocking, to even think that God could have caused such a disaster, and I am not ready to say he caused it, even if he allowed it to happen. But what if out of the record Hurricanes; the high number of Tornadoes; the volcanic activity; the worse earthquake and Tsunami on record; record breaking early snowfalls, "winter" flooding in Utah, Arizona, California, Ohio. A time when one town in Indiana got their usual yearly snowfall total in one single day; and places like Lake Tahoe near Reno received 60" in one early snowfall in December. And rain has sent California mudlsides that look like pictures of a Tsunami wave down the street of Bande Aech. And so what if out of all this "God wants our attention"?
I don’t know if you saw the pictures of a Billboard after one of the Hurricanes made its way through part of Florida. The billboard had been covered over with a plastic or probably viynal layer of the current advertisement. During the storm, this layer was ripped away, revealing the previous ad which read "We need to talk - God". Recently the Tuesday Bible Study was studying from Jeremiah in our Daily Study Bibles (we are a little behind, but we are still prsssing on) and in the 2nd Chapter of Jeremiah he deals with the reason that Israel is about to be plundered by their Northern neighbor. Why? Because they have forsaken their God? He asks, "Has a nation ever changed its gods? (yet they are not gods at all.) But my people have exchanged their Glory for worthless idols. Be appalled at this, O heavens, and shudder with great horror declares the Lord. My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water."
And so while we are asking the question "Why God?" maybe we want to also ask "Why does God want our attention?" Are we a nation that has forsaken its God? Are we a world that has turned away from its Glory? It was no different in the day of Elijah. King Ahab and Queen Jezebel had sold out the nation of Israel to foreign gods. They would worship Baal and prostitute themselves to the worlds gods. Elijah spoke for God and even challenged the prophets of Baal to a duel. "Have your god set the altar on fire!" The prohets of Baal couldn’t conjure up a fire from their god. So Elijah went to work. I want you to note the first thing he did: (1 Kings 18:30) (page 319 pew Bible) "He repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down" (or "thrown down"). Can you imagine that? In order to worship God, and prove his point, the altar of the Lord first had to be repaired. Not only had the nation forsaken God by building another altar they had neglected the care of the one to God. "Had they forgotten to have no other idols befgore them?" "Had they forgotten they could not serve two masters?"
So Elijah rebuilds the altar, and not good enough, he douces it with for pots of water. But not just once, but three times. Twelve pots of water, so much that the water ran and it filled the trench with water. And then ELijah calls upon God. "Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be know that this day you are God in Israel..." (1 Kings 18:36). And "the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice." It is not the only time that fire has fallen: Judgement fire fell on Soddom and Gomorrah; Fire burned in the bush, but did not consume the bush; The lightning was like fire on Mt. Sanai when God appeared to Moses and wrote on the stone tablets; fire came down when Solomon dedicated the Temple; Jeremiah spoke the word of the Lord that was like fire; the Holy Spirit fire fell upon the church at Pentecost. After this, when Elijah hides in the cave, fire even appears. Remember what we just read:
"Then He said, "Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord." And behold the Lord passed by, and a great strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice" (1 Kings 19:11-12) ... "And suddenly a voice came to him, and said "What are you doing here Elijah?" (19:13).
Thge Lord wsn’t in the crushing winds against the mountain. The Lord wasn’t in the earthquake or even in the consuming fire. And it is hard for me to reason that the Lord was in the Hurricanes; or the earthquake or in the Tsunami’s killer waves. But after the waves, what about the "still small voice"?
What if God does want our attention? And though you can draw the inferrence, maybe I don’t even have to talk about "end of the world stuff". But what if God just wants to speak to us from the ruins that are left after the disaster has passed us by. The still small voice: "What are you doing here?"
What are you doing here in a nation that is fast forsaking its God?
What are you doing here in the ruins of a broken down altar?
What are you doing here when there is all this talk about removing the nativity from Christmas?
What are you doing here in a nation that is so consumed with the rights of every religion that Christianity barely has any right at all?
And Elijah was told to go annoint the new King over Israel! Maybe God just wants to speak to us this morning to annoint a new King! The new King of your life, the new Lord of all life! His name is Jesus.
Isn’t that what happens to Job, and Elijah and all of those who have faced lifes storms? In the midst of the storm, somehow they hear the satill small voice and they see the face of God. Job sees God: "He sess Hope. Lover. Destroyer. Giver. Taker. Dreamer. Deliverer. ... Job stands as a blade of grass against the consuming fire of God’s splendor. Jobs demands melt like wax as God pulls back the curtain and heavens light falls uneclipsed across the earth." (3) Job sees God. In fact near the end of the story (Job 42:5) "I had heard about you before, but now I have seen you". It is not enough to just be a nation that has heard about God, but can we be a people who hears from God.
"Job sees God"
"Elijah hears God"
Should God want our attention, will you listen? Will you see? Will you hear, the still small voice?
And if God does want our attention. How will you respond?
(1) http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/01/06/BAGF6ALB071.DTL
(2)http://messychristian.blogs.com/messy_christian/2004/05/a_recovering_in.html
(3) Eye of the Storm, by Max Lucado, pp. 161-162, pp. 163-164
(4) Author Unknown
