A friend forwarded an interesting article to me the other day. It dealt with some of the issues I raised last week and so I thought I would post a few paragraphs for those interested.
by David Batstone
...
"Maybe because I spent so many years in poor regions of the globe I could never accept the prayer-in-blessing-out approach to faithful living. Straight to the point, I have known too many devoted Christians for whom life did not bring them material blessing. Their children still died of infectious diseases that plagued their village. They could not avoid the violence that dictators and ideologues so often use to cow the powerless. Their territory did not expand because their only path for survival was a daily labor with their hands. Yet they did not lose faith, or cease praying for God's blessing.
As I ponder on their lives, I find a more fitting theology for God's presence and action in the world to be laid out in the book of Hebrews. There we are encouraged to have "faith in things not yet seen," and are offered models of individuals who tried to lead devoted lives that honor God. We read that some of them did receive great material blessings, while others ended up in the dens of lions or stoned due to their principled living. We learn, in other words, that God does hear their prayers and loves them profoundly, but it does not always bring them material riches or expanded territory."
This coming week I am hoping to look at examples of blessings in the Bible and see what I can learn there.
posted by tricia @ 5:45 PM
1 Comments:
This is a tough topic area. The greatest help for me has been to dwell on the relational aspect of God's interation with us. He is not a machine who responds to everything in the same way without any consideration of circumstances, our life, or consequences. This doesn't provide answers for specific situations, but I think we get ourselves into trouble when we have formulas we apply to God and expect them to "work" the same every time.
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