It's more than that wonderful accent... :-) Rowan Williams is saying that such events should upset a faith bound up in comfort and ready answers.Tempted to lift this phrase and move it over to the Christian Book Store thread, in fact may still.But is this not part of the larger problem? That what can be portrayed betrays reality and experience? Even scripture itself, by contorting and giving shallow, even half-truth sentiments to the brutaliies that this life offers?Certainly the Lord didn't nor did He offer an answer to every question under the sun. As our brother Ron pointed out in an earlier thread mentioned here. Is it not enough to weep with those who weep? The Greatest Danger—Life"Life is a far greater danger than death. I want to say something, crudely, but very definitely: the Bible nowhere says that men are damned; the Bible says that men are damnable. There is always the possibility of damnation in any life, always the possibility of disobedience; but, thank God, there is also always the possibility of being made “more than conqueror.” The possibilities of life are awful. Think—are you absolutely certain that you are not going to topple headlong over a moral precipice before you are three years older? Look back on your life and ask yourself how it was you escaped when you were set on the wrong course—the tiniest turn and you would have been a moral ruin? Disease cut off with a tremendous fell swoop your companions—why did it not cut you off? The men with you in your youth who were so brilliant—where are they now? Out in the gutter some of them, all but damned while they live. Why are you not there? Why am I not there? Oh, it does us good, although it frightens us, to look at the possibilities of life. May God help us to face the issues.Unless a man’s peace and prosperity are based on a right relationship to God, it may end in a sudden and terrible awakening. We never know whether the next moment is going to bring us face to face with green pastures or a hurricane. The Bible reveals that here is a ruling principle at work in this world that hates God, and when we take sides against that principle there is the very devil to face. That is the Apostle Paul’s argument here. When we are born again into the heavenly kingdom, then come tribulation and anguish, then come persecution and famine, then come nakedness, peril and sword; then comes life, and then comes death—mocking us with paradoxes and puzzles we cannot explain. The possibilities and perils of life are enormous. It is only when some such considerations get hold of men who are bound up in “a show of things” that they begin to see the need for Jesus Christ’s Redemption."The Greater Deliverance"I have been drawing a very dark picture, you say. I have not. It is not within the power of human tongue or archangel’s tongue to state what an awful fact death is, and what a still more awful fact life is. But thank God, there is the greatest deliverance conceivable from all that life may bring and from all that death may bring. Jesus Christ has destroyed the dominion of death, and He can make us fit to face every problem of life, more than conqueror all along the line.Let God have His way, and He will turn the drama of your life into a doxology, and you will understand why the Psalmist breaks out with the words, “O that men would praise the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men!” Jesus Christ can make the weakest man into a Divine dreadnought, fearing nothing. He can plant within him the life that was in Himself, the life Time cannot touch. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth . . . hath everlasting life,” that is, the life Jesus had, so that a man can face all the powers of hell with a conqueror’s tread. Heroics? No, heroism. Heroics sound all very well on a stage, or on paper, but heroism works in flesh and blood, and Jesus Christ makes us flesh-and-blood dreadnoughts. Not all the power of the enemy can fuss or turn aside the soul that is related to God through the Atonement."Oswald ChambersThe servant as His Lord.
