Patience.  I needed it badly on the occasion when I waited for over two hours to get through to the airline we were flying on because of a malfunction with their online booking system, then had to give up and accept a callback five days later.  The Greek word for patience is makrothumia.  Its meaning in the pagan culture was to put up something we cannot control.  Patience simply reflects the blunt truth of having to put up with whatever is out there. 

One desperate day Mary and Martha sent a message to Jesus: “He whom you love is ill.”

On receiving the message, Jesus made the statement that Lazarus’ illness would not end in death, but that God would be glorified through it. God has a plan and intention in everything. His plan is not tailor-made to ensure we avoid trial or distress, and this story is an illustration of that. God is not the author of evil. Trouble entered the world because of or sin, which opened the door to the source of all evil. But God takes up the web of our disaster and weaves it into something which instead brings our deliverance. He uses the materials at hand — sickness, blindness, poverty, injustice — and turns them to gold. So here God starts not with Lazarus’ healing, but with his death. Yet he is going to use that tragedy to fashion a greater triumph.

Anyone who has engaged in spiritual warfare knows the familiar routine: the day begins innocently enough, then it all starts to happen. One thing after another goes wrong, all apparently unrelated. A unexpected bill comes in, a child gets hurt, an unpleasant phone call takes place, a family argument erupts. Or things can be even more serious. A family member is injured, a marriage is threatened, a church begins to split, a job is lost. And so we begin to ask the question, “Is it worth it?”

Lately it seems that almost every day I’m getting asked the same question and giving the same answer.

Here’s the question: How do we bring what we experience today as church into line with what God has laid out in the Bible?

The unexpressed assumption behind the question is that something important is missing.

The book of Psalms opens with a daring statement: “Blessed is the one who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers.” The reason it is daring is because the following words declare who will be blessed and who will not. It is a declaration of God’s right to determine right and wrong, and to judge on that basis.