A Healthy Attitude Toward Sickness?

July 2, 2014August 27, 2025 / rtrube54 / 2 Comments

A healthy attitude toward sickness? That sounds like a bit of an oxymoron but I think that was exactly what Rich was helping us move toward in this Sunday’s message. Rich elaborated some of the unhealthy ways we respond to sickness — our own and others:

As a punishment for something we’ve done wrong. We often look for something to “blame” an illness on when many times, these just “happen”. Perhaps that is what’s scary and we are looking for some “cause” that can help us avoid a similar fate.
As a sign that we don’t have enough “faith” that God can heal us.
As a cause for shame, particularly those illnesses we class as “mental”.
That health is our privilege or right (which often comes with the capacity to “buy” health that may not be true for the less affluent).

The truth is, there is a lot of sickness around us. We share prayer concerns in our congregation each Sunday and I would bet that 90 percent of those concern sickness or health concerns in some form. In earlier years, I wondered whether this might be an overly “negative” practice that failed to focus on other, more “positive” things. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized much more that sickness is real in our community, that health is a gift and not a privilege, and that we both honor God and care for each other when we trust Him to restore our friends’ health or sustain them through illness.

Rich also named three kinds of sickness that are the lot of us all:

Sickness unto healing. That’s what we expect until we encounter extraordinary illnesses where we’re not certain of healing. Then we pray (interesting that we trust docs, medicines, and our bodies for the “routine” things — and only pray when we’re not certain these will do the trick –what’s with that?).
Sickness unto death. All of us will someday face an illness or other health concern that will lead to our deaths. Rich commented on the conflicts we face between grief and relief as we lose loved ones in many of these cases. This reflects something of our ‘sin-sick’ world. We are relieved that suffering is ended, but still grieve at the unnatural “interruption” of death.
Sickness unto sickness. Sometimes we pray and neither are healed nor die (at least right away). Chronic illness puts us in a place of waiting on God, and to somehow redeem the pain and suffering we experience.

I’ve taken the time to summarize Rich’s message because I found his honesty about these realities so refreshing. What this helped me see is that we experience the reality of our hope in Christ not in an approach that suppresses the hard reality of sickness, but as we lean into that hope in the midst of sickness. It also seems very “healthy” to realize that sickness happens — that it is not a punishment, nor a sign of inadequate faith, nor a cause for shame. We should not be surprised by sickness in a fallen world, but rather grateful for the seasons of health we enjoy.

The truth is, Rich’s honesty about these things reflects the Bible’s honesty about sickness.Psalm 41, Rich’s text, is the “unvarnished” plea of David for help from God in the midst of his enemies false statements about his illness and his friends discomfort and abandonment. I prefer this to the illness- and death-denying strategies we so often encounter both inside and outside the church. All that seems to me to be just counterfeit hope–a kind of feel-good religion that works only until you don’t feel good. I’d rather have the Bible’s honest talk about sickness and death and where we really find hope. To me, that actually seems healthy.

Also posted on our church’s blog: Going Deeper.

Vacations With, or From God

June 18, 2014August 27, 2025 / rtrube54 / 3 Comments

This is probably a hazard of being employed in a Christian organization. Since so much of what we are doing is connected with our faith and helping people know Christ, it is sometimes a temptation on vacations to take a vacation from God. Maybe this is a problem others don’t have, but the fact that Rich (Hagopian, our pastor) addressed this on Sunday suggests that it may be.

Rich helpfully observed that developing regular spiritual disciplines can be helpful in this regard. I sometimes refer to these as habits of faithfulness, habits similar to brushing our teeth, that put us in the place where we are paying attention to God. And it is the case that things like my personal Bible reading and prayer do serve as times to think over the vacation day ahead and offer that, and myself to God.

Sometimes though, I think I look at vacation as a time to let down on the discipline and I wonder how many others deal with this? Many of us live highly scheduled lives between our work, family, church, and other obligations. Vacation is a welcome break from all that. And I think sometimes I, at least, am tempted to take vacations from God because I start to associate Him with all that discipline of a highly scheduled life that I long to get away from for a week or so.

It seems to me that vacation can be a time of hearing afresh the invitation of Jesus found in Matthew 11:28-30: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Jesus invitation is “come to me and find rest”. I think that is what we often are longing for, even in the midst of all our travel plans or whatever else we have in mind for our vacations. So I wonder, as we plan our vacations do we ask Jesus to help us rest, to help us find the rest we need in him?

Here are some of the disciplines of rest that have helped me:

Sleep! Many of us are racking up sleep deficits and don’t discover how tired we are until we slow down. I’m struck that when Elijah ran for his life from Jezebel’s threats (1 Kings 19), God let him sleep and eat before he spoke anything to him. Plan a day or two to simply sleep until you wake up without alarms. Then thank God for his gift of sleep!
Unplug. I have a hard time with this, but I find when I turn off the computer and get off the ‘net, I also mute the chatter of hundreds of voices so that I can hear the one that matters.
Long wandering prayer. David Hansen wrote a book by this title in which he described his long, leisurely walks in the woods, or by a fishing stream (it could be by the shore, or even a quiet city street in early morning) where he just noticed, thought, and prayed as things came to mind, and listened for God.
Slow, reflective reading of scripture, maybe a short portion that I think about over several days. A form of this is lectio divina which Rich mentioned and has provided resources for in the past.

One of the curious things about Jesus’ invitation to rest is that it is actually an invitation to rest, not from our work, but in the midst of our work. It’s not a rest from all yokes but the rest that comes from being in the yoke with Jesus, following his lead, going at his pace. I wonder if vacations can be a time where we can “re-yoke” if we have slipped the yoke.

And this might be helpful for those who would say, “I’ve not been very good at spiritual disciplines in everyday life.” You might ask yourself during vacation, what one or two ways of “resting with Jesus” do you want to carry back into every day life and how will you do it? Ben was wise in his post to suggest starting small. Five minutes of being quiet with Jesus each day, or five minutes reading and thinking about a verse of scripture, or one “long wandering prayer walk” a week might be all you do. But it will help you carry the “rest” of your vacation time with God into the rest of your life.

Here’s hoping you have a “restful” vacation with God!

[This post also appears in Going Deeper, a blog our church hosts to “go deeper” in response to our pastor’s weekly messages]

God at Play?

May 21, 2014August 27, 2025 / rtrube54 / Leave a comment

“Work that’s unrelated to want.” That’s how our pastor defined “play” in a message on “the Christian at play.” This sparked some thinking about what it was that God was doing in the “work” of creation. If this definition is accurate, God was in fact at play, because there was no want or necessity in God’s creation. God didn’t create because God “had to.” All this was done simply for God’s pleasure. In the old King James Version, Revelation 4:11 says, “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”

One gets a sense of God at play in making the creation. He says, “let’s do so and so” and it springs into existence, and then at the end of each day, he looks at this and says, “that was goo-ood!” (Bob’s paraphrase!). When he creates fish, he creates a bazillion different kinds. He doesn’t just make green, but an infinite variety of greens. And he gives human beings eyes that can distinguish those shades.

Was God at work or play in creation? Genesis 2:2 says, “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.” It sounds like God is in fact working, But then I notice the rest part. Was God wiped out from doing all this stuff? I don’t think so. Genesis says he “had finished”. One senses that God is admiring and delighting in what God had done–savoring the delight of making and the things made. Was God at work or play in creation? I think the answer is “yes”.

Rich’s definition explores the paradox that often play involves this intense investment of energy that we might be tempted to call work. Likewise, aren’t there times when the work we do that is related to want ceases to be labor and seems to be play? I often describe the joy I have in setting foot on the campus where I work as “feeling like a kid in a candy shop who just received his allowance”!

Sometimes, people think that work was “the curse” or part of the curse of the fall of Adam and Eve. I’ve often taught that work existed prior to the fall (see Genesis 2:15) and that work simply became toilsome and a necessity in consequence of the fall (see Genesis 3:17-19). What the message makes me think about is that there was a connection between work and play that was damaged along with the connections between God, people, and the creation. Work becomes this survival necessity that is often laborious but sometimes still has glimmers of play. Play gets relegated to a “carve out” in our days, or something we live for on the weekends. Sometimes it becomes an obsession and we literally work at our play.

Perhaps then, “playing together”, which is something Rich suggests should be part of the life of our community, is a way of celebrating “the new creation”, the ways Jesus is restoring all the connections severed in the garden. Playing together isn’t just a bonding, fellowship activity (nice churchy words!). It looks forward to the fulfillment of new creation–the new heaven and earth that exceeds our wildest dreams of all that is good and true and beautiful. Maybe Euchre Tournaments really are a taste of heaven!

This blog also appears at our church’s blog page: Going Deeper.

Baggage

May 7, 2014August 27, 2025 / rtrube54 / Leave a comment

This is from my post on Going Deeper, a blog dedicated to reflections on our church’s weekly messages.

In Rudy’s message on Sunday on The Christian at Home, he spoke about the baggage we bring into our family life. If you will pardon the pun, I think this is a mixed bag! Baggage is what we carry with us when we go someplace, in this case on our life’s journey.

Often we think of baggage in negative terms, the dysfunctions and unhealthy tendencies we bring with us into any situation. You might think of it as that shirt that isn’t really your color, or those jeans that really are ready to be converted into rags or those smelly shoes. But I would hope that most of us also pack some decent looking stuff in our bags when we travel, kind of like the qualities of temperament, the talents, and gifts, and perspectives that make us attractive and interesting to others. As I said, for most of us, our baggage is a mix of good and not so good stuff. And that’s what can make marriage and family life hard–or good!

What makes it hard is when we resent others for a good quality that they have that we feel we lack, or when we criticize the faults of another that we don’t struggle with. I suspect there was some of this kind of history between Cain and Abel that we read about in 1 John 3:11-12. Both our good and our bad baggage can be a source of conflict with others in our family in these kinds of situations. And sometimes it really can get bad! If you are in what seems like an unsolvable conflict, don’t keep fighting. Call “time out” and get some help–a talk with a pastor, or counselor. It is a sign of strength and not weakness when you can admit you need help.

The baggage we bring can be good as well. If you are a husband or wife, there had to be some pretty good things in the baggage of the other–or else you are a lousy chooser! In some coaching training I had, we learned to make five good comments for every critical comment. It is funny how we tend to get it the other way around. I wonder if in marriage and family life it would make sense to try to affirm five things we appreciate about the other person each day, and apologize for one shortcoming of our own and, on most days, skip the critique all together!

At the same time, we are not always aware of our negative baggage. It is God’s mercy that we have families! Seriously! You remember the first time you tried to go to school with mismatched clothes and mom told you to go back and change? Sometimes, we can really get in trouble when we take our dysfunctions into public. Usually, there is some member in our family, often our spouse if we are married, who is trying to help us see our negative baggage. I don’t always like it, but often times my wife will save me major grief by pointing out something I’m not seeing in a social situation, or warn me against my tendency to “sermonize” when it would be better to keep my mouth shut and listen!

What I think is going on is that God has given us all good baggage that can both complement (and compliment!) the good things of others in our family. Also, if we are willing to face that we have some stuff in our bags that really doesn’t look (or smell) good on us and let others help us see that, we can save ourselves from grief and make life more pleasant for others. That’s the kind of home I want to live in.

Stand Firm in the Faith

March 26, 2014August 27, 2025 / rtrube54 / Leave a comment

Ben posted yesterday on one of the other phrases in 1 Corinthians 16:13, “be strong.” As I listened to Rich on Sunday, my attention was caught by the phrase “stand firm in the faith.”

One of the things I most appreciated about what Rich said had to do with not confusing faith and certainty. I find this is a real problem with many. Unless they can be certain about God, or something God has promised, they don’t think they can have faith. Truth is, there is very little in life that I can say that is certain when I think carefully about this. Am I certain my wife loves me? I’m pretty sure of that and I trust her enough to fall asleep in her presence and let her prepare my food. But I can’t prove to a certainty that she loves me. I have faith in her love and after 35+ years of marriage, it seems pretty reasonable to trust her!

On the other hand, there are some who think that faith is simply irrationality–believing what we know isn’t true. Faith may be that for some, but what I propose is that Christian faith is reasonable faith–that God has given us sufficient reasons to believe that he is good and that we can trust Him. The resurrection of Jesus, which Paul argues for in 1 Corinthians 15 is perhaps the most compelling of these reasons.

At the same time, Rich focused on something else that is very important. Sometimes we know all the reasons to believe God and it is still hard to act on what we believe to be true. Rich spoke about the idea that sometimes faith is simply “keeping on”. That is what Paul means when he says “stand firm”. Sometimes the best way to “keep on” is simply to stay put!

This is hardest for me when I am anxious or fearful. One place where I struggle with this is money. Things were very tight for us when I was growing up, and I fear being in that place. Whenever the bills mount up, it is tempting to postpone writing those checks to the church and other places where I give regularly. And I’m more prone to think twice (or more) about helping with a special need. Standing firm or “keeping on” means following my regular routine in writing those checks first–and trusting God to get us through the tight patches.

I fear failure. Yet I find the life of faith calls me into doing new, risky things, at times. It may mean a new situation of speaking about Christ, or a new responsibility where I could crash and burn! The “firmness” in standing firm is not the firmness of success versus the shakiness of failure. It is that whether this new venture flies or flops, I am secure in Jesus–firm.

So a few questions for your reflection:

In what instances might you be looking for certainty when God has given you sufficient reason in scripture and your experience that he is good and can be trusted?
Where might you be attempted to stop “keeping on” in some practice of faith in your life?
Where might the Lord be inviting you to trust him to keep you firm and secure in some new, risky thing?

[This is also posted on Going Deeper, a blog reflecting on the messages at my church on which several of us post]