{"id":3031,"date":"2021-01-21T03:50:42","date_gmt":"2021-01-21T09:50:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hebrew4christians.com\/training\/?p=3031"},"modified":"2021-01-24T19:30:28","modified_gmt":"2021-01-25T01:30:28","slug":"sanctifying-the-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hebrew4christians.com\/training\/sanctifying-the-name\/","title":{"rendered":"Sanctifying the Name…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The reason for what happens in our lives is often (always?) beyond our understanding, yet the righteousness of God\u2019s plan \u2013 even if undisclosed to us – must be accepted by faith. When Job was tested with trouble and suffering he said, \u201cThe LORD gives; the LORD takes away; blessed is the name of the LORD\u201d (Job 1:21), and he later reaffirmed his conviction that God was to be trusted, despite the darkness and pain he was experiencing: “Should we receive what is good from God, but not receive what is evil?”he asked (Job. 2:10). The Torah of Job teaches us that all things – both the good and the evil – are under the sovereign control of the LORD, and since \u201call things work together for good\u201d (Rom. 8:28), we trust God and bless Him for perceived evil as well as for perceived good. Despite appearances that sometimes seem to the contrary, we believe in an all-powerful, supreme LORD who has not abandoned the world, but who actively sustains and upholds it with benevolent intent. \u201cWe walk by faith and not by sight\u201d (2 Cor. 5:7). When bad things happen to the righteous, we trust in God\u2019s personal care for their ultimate good, despite their present troubles (Jer. 29:11). As Job further said: \u201cThough he slay me, I will trust in Him\u201d (Job 13:15). This is the heart behind the Kaddish, the mourner\u2019s prayer, that expresses acceptance of God’s world, despite the pain, sorrow, loss, and so on..<\/p>\n

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In this life we \u201csee through a glass darkly\u201d and therefore we must surrender our need to understand God\u2019s sovereign purposes: \u201cAs the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts\u201d (Isa. 55:9). There is danger here, for if we refuse to accept what we cannot understand (or change), we wil find ourselves in further pain and exile. Indeed exalting our need to \u201cunderstand\u201d or justify suffering is a hopeless venture, and it is also a category mistake — as if an intellectual \u201canswer\u201d could assuage the emotional pain and loss we experience… Faith goes beyond the realm of reason to trust in God\u2019s goodness and care, especially when we are enshrouded within a \u201cdark cloud of unknowing.\u201d Surely our Lord understands the test (i.e., our need to practice trust) and therefore Spirit encourages us: \u201cLet him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the LORD and rely on his God\u201d (Isa. 50:10).<\/p>\n

There are many people who find it difficult to accept the idea of God — not because of the “problem of evil,” that is, the puzzle of why an all-powerful and all-loving God would allow so much suffering and pain to be present in the world, but rather because of the problem of their own secret fears, their own personal heartaches, their own searing disappointments… A person who was abused or mistreated as a child might reason that if God wasn’t there for them when they needed him most, that is, when they were in such a helpless state, how can they trust in him when facing the abandonment of their own death? The question is not intellectual but emotional; a matter of trust, not of rationalization. Comfort is what is needed, that is, the assurance that God is nevertheless for you, that he is your friend, your good shepherd, even if you were to be thrown into a fiery furnace… Bonhoeffer went through the death camps, trusting God to the day he was hanged. He never gave up hope, even in the midst of all that darkness. Bonhoeffer died kiddish HaShem, sanctifying the Name of the LORD: Adonai natan, va’Adonai lakach; yehi shem Adonai me’vorach<\/em> (Job 1:21).<\/p>\n

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