Time is passing, but that stack of newspapers in the corner is growing.<\/p>\n\n
Time is passing, but those images of passenger jets, flaming skies and twisted steel are still buried over there under the new layers of rubber-suited health warriors fighting a tide of sickening white powder.<\/p>\n\n
Time is passing, but preachers know people are still asking: Where was God? They can see people flinch when they hear a Psalm that says: \u201cHe who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. \u2026 You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day, nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness, nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
\u201cRight now, people who aren\u2019t even believers are going to stop you and ask: \u2018Where was God?\u2019 It\u2019s a serious question and we have to take it seriously,\u201d said Haddon Robinson, one of the world\u2019s most celebrated teachers of preaching. \u201cPeople who are asking this question are sincere. But still, it does kind of make you want to say, \u2018You never took evil all that seriously, did you? You thought evil was something up on a movie screen, but you never really thought it was real.\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n\n
\u201cWhere was God?\u201d is the kind of question people ask during a crisis. In the months ahead, said Robinson, preachers will almost certainly have dig deeper than this one ancient mystery. They will need to wrestle with other questions linked to fear and hope, joy and pain, human freedom and supernatural evil, twisted souls and eternal justice.<\/p>\n\n
Millions of people are searching for God. Millions are angry with God. Many are searching and angry at the same time.<\/p>\n\n
Welcome to the complex and dramatic world of the Bible and real faith. These are the kinds of issues Robinson has helped preachers face in Dallas and Denver and, today, as a distinguished professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary outside Boston. A few years ago, a national poll named him as one of the top 12 preachers in the English-speaking world.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cPeople are watching a drama unfold, these days, but they\u2019re not sure what\u2019s happening,\u201d he said. \u201cThey want to know if someone is really in charge. They want to know what part they\u2019re supposed to be playing in this story. Everyone is shook up. The stereotype is to say that everything has changed, but what\u2019s really true is that everything has been challenged. <\/p>\n\n
\u201cRight now, even people who don\u2019t go to church are asking about the end of the world. They\u2019re asking where God is, but they\u2019re also asking who God is. One thing is sure \u2014 God doesn\u2019t seem to be the happy, white-haired man sitting up in a cloud somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Many of the questions preachers will face in an era of terror and strife, he said, are linked to suffering, repentance and, ultimately, redemption. Thus, it\u2019s time to note that the biblical drama includes scenes of unspeakable tragedy, as well as triumph. The villains win many victories, while the people of God often wander lost in the wilderness. The Bible has as much to say about \u201cevil\u201d as about \u201cgood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Most of all, this drama is full of saints who rejoice in the midst of suffering. Modern believers may ask: What was that all about? The saints also focused on God\u2019s call for them to repent of their own sins, instead of assigning blame to others. They kept the faith, even when confronting painful mysteries.<\/p>\n\n
These great themes were easy to ignore, during an era when many Americans were meditating on their stock portfolios and Day-Timers.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been telling ourselves that we\u2019re normal, while all of those saints must have been strange people who brought all that suffering on themselves, somehow,\u201d said Robinson. \u201cBut the atmosphere that surrounds our preaching has changed. Six months ago, if you preached a sermon about suffering and the possibility that life could take a real turn for the worse, it would have seemed like you were trying to whip up some gloom and doom. People would have written you off.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cI think people are ready to listen, now.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Time is passing, but that stack of newspapers in the corner is growing. Time is passing, but those images of passenger jets, flaming skies and twisted steel are still buried over there under the new layers of rubber-suited health warriors fighting a tide of sickening white powder. Time is passing, but preachers know people are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n