Roller Coaster Scriptures

Click here to read Isaiah 9

I am just going to be up-front that I don't like roller coasters.  The whooshing and twirling and twisting sets my head spinning and stomach asking honestly, "Why God?  Make it stop!"  This passage starts off with such hope for those who feel like they dwell in darkness and feel like the light has been extinguished.  I even understand the images about battle given that a few chapters earlier how the North tried to over take Jerusalem.  When you get to the passage that comes with the hope of a child who will be called, "Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of peace," and the thrill of hope comes swooshing in with such a force I feel the wind in my hair and my stomach does somersaults of joy.

But then...oh then...comes the upside down loop de loops.  After the stirring and soaring language of hope comes this crushing language of destruction.  While this is very difficult to read, I also know that life can sometimes feel like a roller coaster.  Life is going along fine and dandy...when all the sudden something happens that takes the wind right out of us.  Perhaps it is the death of a family member or friend, the loss of a job, a friend's harsh comments, or add your experiences here.

Sometimes we get the impression that all of scripture should be a warm, cozy blanket on a cold Wisconsin day.  Yet, the Word of God comes to the life of and from the life of faithful from years ago.  And while life has profoundly joyful moments, there is also heartbreak.  Perhaps what is so difficult to reconcile in this passage and others is that often both the joy and pain are attributed to God.  I don't have an easy answer to this tension.  But that is because life is messy.  Is the pain in my life God's actions or a result of my free will?
What do you think?

Perhaps we focus too much on trying to place each particular pain on that continuum and yet the end result is still that pain exists.  Even if I could definitively assign each particular pain along that continuum, I would still have to deal with and face the pain.  And as a person of faith, I am called to also notice and be open to other's pain as well.

I don't want to say that the conversation about the causes of pain is unnecessary, but I know it is deeply personally.  I once had a seminary professor tell me that he was ministering with a family who saw the death of a child as coming from God and when he told them that this simply could not be the case in any way, the couple was even more devastated, like a security blanket had been snatched away.  Years later he said, "I had no right telling that family their theology was wrong.  There was a time for that conversation...just not then."  But the church does need to have the conversation and Isaiah encourages us to do that.

So, what do you think?  Maybe it is difficult to classify ALL suffering from God or from our own human actions.  Maybe it is more situation by situation.  Perhaps as the words of Isaiah 9 roam around our minds and hearts and lives today, we can prayerfully ponder our own thoughts...and be willing to change as the roller coaster of life takes us through the coming eleven months.  And may the traces of God's grace sustain you in that prayerful pondering.

Blessings and peace!