Quote from Forum Archives on May 14, 2003, 1:26 pm

Posted by: henkf <henkf@...>

 Dear God... Kid's wisdom in Cartoon form

http://folsom.sk.ca/deargod.htm

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If I can help, Call me!

 

   

Hebrews 4:14-16

 

     Valentine's Day has come and gone. And so did Mother's
day. It came with much talk of love.  But now that these days
are gone, you may be feeling that you are without love.
Maybe death has taken away a husband or wife.  You feel empty,
crushed, overwhelmed by grief.  Maybe your spouse divorced you.
You feel rejected, bitter, alone.  Maybe you've been dating
someone, but that relationship has soured.  You're
disappointed.  Or, perhaps, you have people all around you,
people who say they love you, but somehow that isn't enough.
Now I cannot erase all your feelings with a few words.
However, I hope that I can encourage you with words about God's
great love for you.  And I pray that you'll embrace His love
because His love can fill the emptiness when human love fails.
Earthly embraces don't last forever.  Death wrenches us away
from one another's love.  Divorce is the terrible consequence
when love is rejected.  Through Jesus Christ God offers you a
love that lasts. Paul said, "that neither death nor life,
neither angels nor rulers, neither anything in the present nor
in the future, no powers, nothing above or below, nor any other
creature can ever separate us from the love God has for us in
Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39).  No, earthly embraces
don't last, but God is never going to withdraw his love from
those who love the Savior.

 

     But it's an interesting thing...  Indeed, it's a
perplexing fact, that Him whom we would love above all other
things is beyond our embrace.  You can hug someone you love,
but how do you embrace Jesus?  You can't see Him with your
eyes.  You can't hear words coming directly from His very lips.
You can reach your arms out to Him, but there seems to be
nothing there, just; just empty space.  Jesus Christ, the
loving Son of God whom we would love above all others seems to
be beyond our embrace.   To what then are you supposed to
cling?   For certainly life is hard and disappointments are so
bitter that you yearn to cling to a good, loving God.

 

     Hebrews chapter four says, "Now that we have a great High
Priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God,
let us cling to what we confess.  For we do not have a High
Priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.  He was
tempted in every way just as we are -- yet He remained without
sin.  So let us come boldly to the throne of grace to receive
mercy and find grace to help us when we need it" (Hebrews 4;14-
16).

 

     The Bible says "Let us cling to what we confess."   Since
Jesus Christ is not visibly present among us, the Bible tells
us to embrace the faith, not just any faith but the Christian
faith, the only faith among world religions that offers God's
lasting love.  Hang on to the Christ-centered doctrine of the
Old and New Testaments.  There are only two testaments of Jesus
Christ, the old and the new. Embrace the words of God's help
for us sinners in Jesus. In short, as Hebrews says, cling to
the confession.  And that confession tells us that God is a God
who helps you.  God is willing to help you.  He is able to help
you.  He is waiting for you to ask for His help. 

 

I often tell people to "call me if I can help you" and at the
same time that I say it I forget I said it. That's the way it
is with us human beings.  "Good luck, and if you have any
problems, call me."  We don't really want calls for help, but
if they come we'll try to oblige.  Though we may want to help,
sometimes we just can't.  We are limited human beings. But how
different God is!  How we should embrace the confession of His
help. God can help you.  We human beings try to help one
another in limited ways. God's ability to help you is
unbounded!  He set the sun, the moon, and the stars in their
places.  He put the earth under your feet.  He's given you life
and sustained it through the years.  Not only you, but the
psalmist tells us that "The eyes of all wait upon You, O Lord,
and You give them their meat in due season" (Psalm 145).  God
is omnipotent.  He is almighty.  That power, power beyond
anything you or I can conceive, can help you in your physical
necessities.  The Savior says, "I tell you, stop worrying about
what you will eat or drink to keep alive or what you will wear
on your bodies.  Is not life more than food, and the body more
than clothing?  Look at the birds of the air.  They do not sow
or reap or gather into barns; but your Father in heaven
continues to feed them.  Aren't you worthy more than they?
(Matthew 6:25-26).  Now God will not always answer your prayer
in the way that you might have suggested.  The omnipotent God
is also the omniscient God.  His thoughts are higher than our
thoughts, his ways higher than our ways (Isaiah 55).  But that
does not change His ability to help you.

 

     Nor does it alter God's desire to help you.  I think that
one of the most common sins that you and I commit is that we
don't call upon God more often for help.  Maybe that's because
we gauge God's attitudes as if He were only human.  Most people
do not delight in always being asked for help. I am sincere
when I say "Call me if
you have any problems."  But most of
us don't delight in constant calls for help.  But God is not
merely a man.  He is God who is willing and wanting and waiting
to help you.  In Luke 18 He says, "Will God not see to it that
His chosen ones, who cry to Him day and night, receive justice?
Is He slow to help them?  I tell you," Jesus says, "He will
quickly see to it that they receive justice" (Luke 18:6-8). God
invites you in Psalm 50, "Call upon Me in the day of trouble.
I will deliver you and you shall glorify Me" (Psalm 50:15).
How many times haven't you sinned, and I too, because we didn't
ask God for His help?  This is our confession.  To this we
cling, this we embrace, that the God of love wants to help us
in our needs.

 

     Perhaps you imagine that God doesn't understand your
needs.  After all, He's the great God.  You think, how can He
with all His power and glory understand the pain that I feel in
my little life.  How can He understand the heartbreak that
comes from the death of a loved one?  How can He possibly
understand the pain that divorce brings, the rejection, the
sense of failure, the loneliness, the shattered ideals of
marriage?  You imagine, how could God understand?  Perhaps the
omniscient God understands my hurt in an intellectual way, but
does He feel it?  How can the great God possibly know how
broken and empty I feel inside?  Many nice things were said on
Valentine's Day,on mMother's day,  but some of them weren't
true, some of them
don't seem to apply to you.  Those days are over and the
truth is that you may feel broken and empty, without love.

 

     If you feel that way, listen to what the Bible says.
Listen to the amazing love that God's Word extends to you.
Hebrews says, "Let us cling to what we confess.  For we do not
have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with our
weaknesses.  He was tempted in every way just as we are --yet
He remained without sin.  So let us come boldly to the throne
of grace to receive mercy and find grace to help us when we
need it" (Hebrews 4;14-16).  This passage talks about a High
Priest and that's Jesus Christ.

 

     Jesus Christ is the Son of God.  He shares with God the
Father an eternal being, divine glory, all the qualities of
God, and He is worthy of receiving the praise that belongs only
to God, for Jesus Christ is true God. But the Son of God came
into our world, took on human flesh and blood, became a real
human being, just as you and I are real human beings. The
Nicene Creed is a confession of the Christian Church.  It says
that Jesus Christ is "the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of
His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very
God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance
with the Father, by whom all things were made; who for us men
and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate
(that means, He was made flesh) by the Holy Spirit of the
virgin Mary and was made man."  So God's Son has become one of
us.

 

     God has become one of us with one important difference.
Hebrews says that Jesus, the Son of God, "remained without
sin."  It is in that difference that we see how God has
embraced the world with His love.  Our world is a world fallen
into sin.  The evidences are all around us.  Society is beset
with monumental problems.  Your own life is often troubled.
There are days when it all seems to come crashing in on you.
Debts.  Disease.  Divorce. Finally, death.  "The wages of sin
is death," the Bible says (Romans 6:23a). The Son of God came
to deliver you from sin and its terrible consequences. To do
that He remained sinless.  Never once did He depart from God's
perfect will for human life.  Never once did He do anything
except that which pleased God.  Never once would He let sin
deflect Him from His mission to help you. That's why Jesus died
on the cross and rose from the grave, to help you.  He suffered
the full fury of divine anger at your sins on Calvary's cross.
And God raised His Son on Easter to demonstrate the triumph of
life and to show the world the magnificence of His love, love
so great that God would come and go to the cross for you.

 

     In the middle ages Thomas a Kempis praised this love of
Jesus for you. He wrote:

 

     Oh, love, how deep, how broad, how high, Beyond all
thought and fantasy, That God, the Son of God, should take Our
mortal form for mortal's sake!

 

     "We do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize
with our weaknesses," says the Bible.  God not only has an
intellectual knowledge of your life and of your pain, but He
knows, He really knows how you feel because He's been there.  
 He's felt the heartbreak, of death, for He wept when His
friend Lazarus died.  If death has come into your home lately,
remember both to call upon God for help and to know that you're
calling upon a God who Himself has wept because of death.  He
has also overcome death. And so now your tears the tears which
you do shed, can glisten with a heavenly hope.

 

     Jesus Christ knows how you hurt when you've been
rejected.  Luke nineteen tells us about Jesus' approach to
Jerusalem in order to die.  It says, "When He came near and saw
the city, He wept over it and said, "If today you only knew --
yes, you -- the way to peace!  But now it is hidden so that you
cannot see it.  You did not know the time in which help came to
you" (Luke 19:41,41,44b).  If you've been divorced and feel
rejected and alone, the ideals of marriage lie shattered all
about you, then remember to call upon God for help and remember
that you're praying to a God who Himself knows rejection.  His
embracing love can put your shattered life back together again.

 

     If you're looking for love then cling to the confession
of God's love for you in Jesus Christ.  Perhaps that's the most
amazing thing about God's love for you.  This Gospel of God's
love would be unbelievable if it were not for God's Spirit. St.
Paul says that "an unspiritual person does not accept the
things of the Spirit of God.  He thinks they are foolish, and
he cannot know them because one must have the Spirit to judge
them correctly" (1 Corinthians 2:14).  And Jesus says in John
3, "What is born of the flesh is flesh, but what is born of the
Spirit is spirit" (John 3:6).  God offers you His Spirit in the
Word of the Gospel and the Sacraments of Baptism and Holy
Communion to implant a living and hopeful faith in your heart.
The Holy Spirit works faith in you.  Faith that embraces God's
amazing love.  You can take the shattered pieces of earthly
love and life, hand them over to God in prayer, and experience
His embracing love through Word and Sacrament.

 

     At the outset of today's message I mentioned the
perplexing fact that the Savior, is unseen.  He who is dearer
to us than family, dearer even than life itself, cannot be seen
and heard and embraced in the same way that we cling to people
who are dear.  The source of this irony is the Ascension of
Jesus Christ.  Hebrews says that Jesus, our High Priest, "has
gone through the heavens."  Forty days after God the Father
raised His Son from the dead, Jesus ascended bodily into heaven
and withdrew His visible presence from us. His visible
presence.  He's still very much with you.  "Lo," He says, "I am
with you always" (Matthew 28:20).  But He's not with you
visibly, the way other dear people are. 

 

     However, one day you will see Him face to face.  The
yearnings that you have for a fuller realization of love will
be fulfilled perfectly one day. After Jesus ascended the angels
said to the disciples, and they say to you today, "This Jesus
who was taken away from you to heaven, will come back in the
same way that you saw Him go to heaven" (Acts 1:11). He will
come back. Now the ascended Lord Jesus is enthroned in glory.
Paul told the Philippians that He is, "very highly exalted."
This ascended Lord prays for you.  Paul says in Romans 8, "It
is Christ who died, and more than that, He rose.  He is at the
right hand of God, and He prays for us.  Who will separate us
from the love of Christ?" (Romans 8:34-35).  This is the most
wonderful thing you can ever hear.  God has given you a Savior
who even now is praying for you.  What an embracing love! 

 

     How we yearn for the day when we will see His love face
to face in heaven!   Hebrews 9:24 says that Christ went "into
heaven itself, to appear now before God for us....  And to
those who eagerly look for Him, He will appear a second time,
not to deal with sin but to bring salvation to them."

 

     Until He comes, pray to God in your time of need.  Ask
Him to put your life together with His Gospel, His Good News.
And when you want to embrace a love that never ends, remember,
"God is love" (1 John ).  Amen.

 

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