No, it’s Matt – JP is one of the commenters on the blog. I wrote “Hi JP” for if he stopped by to check on the comments. Hopefully I’ll get a comments plugin installed soon so you can subscribe via email to comments on a particular post and not have to remember to check back.

But I think anonymity will still speak volumes to them.

Thanks,
Cathy
ps – of course i’m working last minute on this – so the sooner you ok this, the sooner I can print it! THANKS for your courage here. & that of your wife.

Have you heard about The Seventh Day weekly blog carnival at On the Horizon?

You can submit a post on ANY topic! (Keep it clean, ok?) It’s a great way to reach a new audience for your site! The Carnival is also an excellent resource for discovering new sites and making new blogging friends.

The Carnival takes place every Seventh Day (Sunday) and posts may be submitted through Saturday at noon for the next day’s edition.

I invite you to submit your best work (1 post per blog per week) from the prior week on ANY topic using the submission form!

Want to help spread the word? You can put the Blog Carnival widget or The Seventh Day button on your site! (Email me for the graphic file.)

Questions? Drop me an e-mail: admin@hopefulspirit.com. Or use the Contact Form at On the Horizon !

Thanks and hope to see your post included on The Seventh Day!

I do wonder why sometimes people are given warnings, some are not, why some people may not hear warnings, and why others ignore warnings from God. Most of my wondering is probably just because I don’t wait long enough for the answer…

Hey I liked the baseball analogy – not silly at all. My thoughts were,

- Is the baseball guy thanking God because God made him hit the homerun? I think if you’d ask the ballplayer, it was probably more for the ability to do well, thanking God for blessing him with an opportunity to impact people while doing something he truly loves, that God will somehow get glory from this, etc. That’s what I would be doing and I am certainly no “super-christian” (I’m actually a real jerk sometimes) so I’d expect other followers of Christ to do the same or more.

- What about the pitcher? Could be that he just screwed up No, seriously, let’s say he was praying right before the pitch, for the same thing as the batter. Did God like the other guy better? Perhaps there is a bigger lesson than this. Maybe it was the hitter’s time. Maybe the pitcher learns from that scenario and goes on to succeed in other situations. Maybe the pitcher gets canned after the season and ends up in the career that God wants him in next. In that last case, that would be very hard for the pitcher to praise God in getting fired, but if you catch up w/ him 10 yrs. later he may say, “that was the best thing that happened to be because of ‘X’.”

God is all about the “win-win” … just so long as I keep an eternal perspective.

Let’s say I die in a car crash tomorrow. I have a wife and a child so that would be horrible for them beyond belief. Realistically though, I would expect my wife to remarry a good guy that would raise my daughter. Most of my oldest & closest friends do not know Christ so far as I know, so what if at the funeral they did come to know him as their savior and went on to lead their families into a relationship with him?

So far as my beliefs go, my death could then end up with dozens or perhaps hundreds of people not just going to heaven, but also getting to enjoy a real-live relationship w/ the very creator of the universe (along w/ associated trials) while still on earth.

You mentioned you look to science, so you can see the same in nature. A forest fire (natural ones) brings new growth and renewal and is necessary in an ecosystem. Sucks for any frog burned up in the blaze, but it only truly sucks if this life is all there is, and if we don’t look at the greater impact.

Faith is tricky and very, very difficult. I am “Mr. Spreadsheet.” I don’t like unknowns and try to quantify everything. I try doing that with God and while during the last few years he has shown me so much about him, there is infinitely more I may not understand until I’m dead or ever understand. That was/is tough to accept but now I’m actually feeling some degree of freedom in that. Trying to figure everything and know everything unnecessarily stressed me out and probably kept me from doing what God put me here to do.

Anyhow, long-winded response so I hope you stuck w/ it

WV, huh? Wife’s family is from around Huntington – nice area. Sucks about that last game of the regular season for the mountaineers, but you guys dominated in the bowl game. Nice to talk w/ you.

I understand your view and it was a view I once held. The problem still comes back to: why would God give you little taps on the shoulder (so to speak) while there are others who are not given fair warnings, hints etc etc… The problem of evil is what eventually drove me away from the life of faith. It’s like baseball. Guy hits homerun, stands at home plate and thanks god. What about the pitcher who gave up that homerun. Was that God too? Silly analogy, I know.

Yes, I can here via that website.

Oh, absolutely – I’m not giving thanks for the sickness, per se. I am giving thanks that in that situation, the Lord would help us to solve a far greater issue we were not aware of.

good to hear from you again

Thanks for stopping by – it is certainly tough to watch people suffer. I struggled mightily with that very question.

Ultimately, it came down to me accepting two things

• life here on earth is not quite as important as I think it is.
• Pain and suffering – even in it’s greatest form on earth – is not comparable to eternity with God.

It takes quite a leap of faith on that part but I came to make that choice based on my personal (limited) experiences with an unknown God before I was a Christian, and sitting there thinking, “boy, I had better be right on this “no god” thing.” Was I hedging my bets? Sure, but in the Bible, Jesus is pretty clear about weeding out those who sincerely follow him in their hearts with those paying lipservice.

It’s life

Indeed it is, but from what I’ve seen, life and God are 100% intertwined.

thanks for your thoughts, though & feel free to drop by anytime Any chance you came over from Bill’s blog at http://www.friendlychristian.com or was this just a fortuitous coincidence we crossed paths?

It’s life.

You wonder where god is when things don’t go so lucky.

I do not believe one should thank God for anything He has already paid for on the Cross: that us sin and sickness.

Thank Him that He is our sin and sickness bearer- and through His dead and resurrection we have forgiveness of sin and healing for our bodies. ..In this we rejoice and give thanks

Sidharth