Making Life Work

By: Hugh Buchanan

    In November of 2007 I accompanied my wife, Boni, to the funeral of Wanda, her dear lifelong friend. At the service, I experienced something remarkable and unexpected that lit up one Scripture for me in a way nothing except personal experience can do. I wasn’t close to Wanda. Although serious and sobered by the nearness of death, I was not gripped by the aching loneliness and sense of loss the death of a close friend or loved one brings.     At the service, as soon as Boni made eye contact with Wanda’s sister, they were drawn toward each other at a run, as if a magnetic force drew them. They threw their arms around each other. Their faces contorted in grimaces of anguish and grief and their eyes filled with tears. Their bodies...

From the Program Notes of Ronald L. Dart. Written by Allie Dart.  

    Because of the things that have happened in our lives during the past 16 months, Ron and I decided to read through the Book of Job for our nightly Bible study. We’re learning well that Job did not wear A Mask of Evil. He was a righteous man, yet God allowed him to suffer. It’s been interesting to see how Job’s friends probably weren’t the encouragement he had hoped for, but they dragged out the magnifying glass, so to speak, to try to find ways where Job had missed the mark.     Throughout this most difficult trial, we’ve had many very supportive friends for whom we are very grateful. But, the same as Job, there have been those who have somehow felt it their duty to, frankly,...

By: Ronald L. Dart

 

    What do you do when you have already done all you can? You are in trouble and there is no way out. You are sick and the doctors have done all they can. You are persecuted and there is no relief. You have made every effort, tried every option, and still see no way out. The matter is out of your hands. What do you do now?

By: Lenny Cacchio

    It saddened me when I saw him.  His once vibrant athletic frame was now a shadow of its former self, racked by the crude chemotherapy of the day.   I remember most how terribly thin and pale he looked, and how much hair he had lost.  But he grinned when he saw me and asked, "Did you play much ball this summer, Leonard?"  "Yep," I said.   "Every chance I got."

    He was Nick Ioveno, my high school baseball coach.  Legend had it that he once played professional baseball and made it all the way to the New York Mets.   In his first game someone hit him a groundball that went right between his legs.  So much for his career in The Show.

    What I knew about him was crude at best: he was the toughest son of a gun I ever...

By: Lenny Cacchio

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. -- Matthew 11:29 NIV

    I’m a boy from the city, so for many years I misunderstood these words of Jesus.  I once thought that Jesus was painting a picture of me with my neck in the yoke with Jesus walking behind me, reins and maybe whip in hand, "encouraging" me onward.  

    That’s quite a picture of Jesus and how he supposedly operates.  I never focused on the implicit bad theology of me doing the heavy work and Jesus compelling me forward like a slave master in my life of toil and travail.

    One afternoon I was strolling around the square in the city of Liberty, Missouri.  Many of the...

By: Lenny Cacchio

    Imagine the angst you would feel if you were caught in a desert place with your children in tow, but no water and no visible means of attaining any.  Imagine if you were there at the behest of a man who had promised you entry into a land of plenty, yet without water whatever dreams you had and whatever credibility he had would both evaporate like the dry well before you.

    I would bet you would have something to say to the man who led you there.  And indeed the people of Israel did just that.  “Why did you bring the Lord’s community into this desert, that we and our livestock should die here?  Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to this terrible place? It has no grain or figs, grapevines or pomegranates. And there is...

By: Lenny Cacchio

Have you ever felt like this?

1.  “God, where have you gone?  Why aren’t you with me anymore?”

2.  “God, take this trial away from me!”

3.  “I am so distraught that I just want to go to sleep and never wake up.”

    If you have ever had those thoughts, congratulations!  You have experienced the same thoughts and emotions as your Savior.  Listen to his words.  “My God, my God!  Why have you forsaken me?”  (Matthew 27:26)  “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.”  (Matthew 26:39)  “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” (Matthew 26:38)

    The Apostle Paul was right when he said that “no temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man” (1 Corinthians...

By: Lenny Cacchio  

    “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.” (Matt 10:28-31 NIV)     Comforting words, those. If God is aware of sparrows falling from the sky, how much more does he know of our travails! Yet missed in this talk of God’s omniscience is a startling fact: sparrows do fall from heaven, and God does nothing to stop it. Many sparrows have fallen in his sight, and not just sparrows. People fall too. It must grieve a loving God’s heart to have seen the sufferings of the ages. Pestilence and storms. Warfare and tyranny. The suffering of martyrs....

By: Lenny Cacchio  

    It is hard to write an essay on the goodness of God when there is so much evil in the air. Why did God allow Katrina to disrupt so many lives? That is a natural question for a ten-year old, and even great theologians wrestle with it. How can all-powerful and all-loving God allow bad things to happen to good people?     I don’t have all the answers, and I won’t tell you that I do. Rabbi Harold Kushner struggled with it, and through simple deductive logic came to a startling conclusion. He reasoned that if God is just, if God is loving, and if God is all-powerful, then such a God couldn’t allow bad things to happen to good people. Therefore, either God is not just, or God does not love, or God is not all-powerful.    ...