IF YOU HAVE NOT SENT IN YOUR 2018 STEWARDSHIP PLEASE DO THAT TODAY.
WE HAVE ALSO SUBMITTED TO THE PERMIT OFFICE OUR REQUEST FOR THIS YEAR'S FESTIVAL. THE DATE IS OCTOBER 13, PLEASE PRAY THEY GRANT IT TO US! WE WILL NEED VOLUNTEERS TO ASSIST WITH THE FESTIVAL, SO PLEASE LET THE PARISH COUNCIL KNOW IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO HELP US WITH OUR FESTIVAL.
WE ARE LOOKING FOR VOLUNTEERS TO BECOME MEMBERS OF OUR PARISH COUNCIL. PLEASE THINK ABOUT HELPING ST. JOHN IN A DEEPER AND MORE GIVING WAY!
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WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS!
How many times have you heard and repeated these same words, "What did I do to deserve this." Some Evangelicals will proclaim that you have done something wrong to deserve the illness, pain, or suffering you are inflicted with. Atheists, on the other hand, say it is part and parcel of being human, giving no quarter to God or any other transcendent or mystical being. So what is illness really about, and can illness help us see a different way of life beyond pain and suffering?
One of the best Old Testament Bible stories that examine this very fact is about a man who is so faithful to God that he has never suffered any loss or hardship in his life. God, throughout Job's life, grants him everything he wants and hopes for.
On the other hand, Lucifer realizing that Job has always been in God's favor strikes a deal with God over Job. Lucifer initiates a plan to put Job to the test with God's blessing. Lucifer does this by slowly taking away everything that Job has received in his life, in hopes that one day Job will curse God. However, God tells Lucifer that he can do whatever he wants to Job, but with a caveat, he cannot hurt him, because at that point God will put an end to the test. Remember the active word here is that God permits Lucifer to do this to Job.
Moreover, when Job starts to experience tragedy in his life his three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar become suspicious that Job has sinned knowingly or unknowingly before God. Why, because God in the Old Testament operates under the Law of Retribution. This means that if you do good you will get good, and if you do bad, bad things will happen to you in return. His friends insist and criticize him for not being honest about the reason God is punishing him. Job must have sinned they believe because God will never punish a righteous man under this Law. It is like similar to the idea of Karma in Eastern Philosophy. So why is Job suffering? Job has always followed God's rules and is a righteous man, but now he is suffering like a sinner deserving nothing good in his life.
Furthermore, we of the New Testament are people not under the Law of Retribution like Job, but are blessed with a God of Redemption. Through the blessing of Free-Will God permits us to perform deeds that are good and evil. Again the active word here is permits! God permits illness and all kinds of ailments for our benefit but is not the author of it. St. Maximus the Confessor stresses that "God, in creating human nature, did not introduce. . . suffering into it, and that the susceptibility to suffering, corruption and death that followed did not come from God." St. Gregory Palamas declares that "God created neither death, nor illnesses, nor infirmities"; "God created neither the death of the soul nor the death of the body."
Dostoyevsky writes, "A healthy man is always an earthly, material man . . . But as soon as he falls ill, and the normal, earthly order of his organism is disturbed, then the possibility of another world makes itself known to him at once; and as the illness worsens, his relations with this world becomes ever closer." Illness brings us closer to God, and it gives us the opportunity to reflect on our life without the passions. It is the doorway to the wisdom of God and our dependence on His will.
Job has everything taken away from him and says something like this, I wish I was never born. "Hardships assault me in wave after wave. Why then did You bring me from the womb? Oh, that I had died, and no eye had seen me. If only I had never come to be but had been carried from the womb to the grave. Are my days not few? Withdraw from me, that I may have a little comfort before I go—never to return—to a land of darkness and gloom. . . "
How many of us have felt the same way as Job when facing disaster and illness. Is this a God of love and compassion, or is He permitting this to happen to us for our benefit? Job in the end never curses God, and Lucifer has to stop tormenting Job. Because of Job's enduring dedication to God, He restores all of his possession twice the previous amount. "So the Lord blessed the latter part of Job's life more than the earlier. He owned 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 1,000 yoke of oxen, and 1,000 female donkeys. He also had seven sons and three daughters . . . Job lived 140 years after this and saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. Then Job died, old and full of years."
Finally, whenever someone if sick or is facing an illness we read prayers for God's intervention. These prayers are very telling about what God wants from us in our illness. We ask God to heal the person inflicted in order for their salvation and repentance. "Bless the means employed for the working out of his (her) cure, granting that he (she) may so endure his (her) suffering in the flesh that the wounding of his (her) body may be to avail for the correcting and salvation of his (her) soul, for Yours it is to show mercy and to save, O Christ our God . . ." As you can see God only wants us to recognize His presence and source of our lives that is GOOD! Amen.
