- Blessed Be Your Name

Yesterday, I posted a song called "Blessed Be Your Name" by Matt Redman (also in today's posting below). I thought I'd tell you a bit about the story behind it.

"'Blessed Be Your Name' stems from the story of our lives," Matt explains. "Both Beth and I had tough upbringings—a lot of different issues to do with fathers—and over the years we've come to realize that worshiping God is a choice, and the best choice we'll ever make."

"Matt and Beth were on sabbatical in the U.S. during the September 11 terrorist attacks. They wrote "Blessed Be Your Name" while in the shadow of those tragic events.

"It struck me how little a vocabulary we have in church worship music to respond appropriately in dark times of life," Matt says. "We all face seasons of pain and unease. And in those times we need to find our voice before God. The church, and indeed the world, needs songs of lamentation."

Blessed be Your Name

On the road 
Marked with suffering

Though there's pain 
In the offering

Blessed be Your Name..... 

"Many believe the Book of Job is about suffering, but Matt has a different interpretation. "I think it's really about something much grander—the sovereignty of God—of which suffering is a subcategory. At the end of chapter one it says: 'The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised.'" Or, as Matt's song puts it, "Blessed be the name of the Lord."

"Trust is a beautiful act of worship," Matt says. "It says to God, 'I believe in You—in Your unfailing goodness and greatness—no matter what season of life I find myself in.'"

Undoubtedly, one of the hugest issues people struggle with in relationship to God - and may I say, one of the biggest obstacles to people drawing near to God - is the whole area of suffering. Where is God when it hurts? Where was God in horrific events like the Holocaust? Why was He seemingly silent? Is He absent in the midst of famines, wars, crises? Does He, in fact, care at all when we humans are suffering?

Good grief, like I don't have enough to deal with - now, on the eve of my second chemo, I've decided to take on one of the biggest theological issues known to man, and I have to answer it by the end of this posting! Talk about stress! Hahaha!!

So I won't pretend that I can answer it in full - at least, not tonight. But since I love to write, love a good challenge, and love to be verbose, I will say what I think: I do believe that when God set human beings loose on the earth to run things (oh dear, why did He do that? We are SO not good at it...), He set up a rule that we would have a small thing called Free Will.

That is, He set it up so that we can do pretty much what we want (within reason, of course - we can't do things like defy gravity or anything like that), that we can behave in either constructive or destructive ways, that we can follow a moral code or not follow it, etc.

The one caveat (every time I see that word, I think of caviar, but for my second-language friends, the word actually means 'warning') is, along with Free Will comes the responsibility of consequence. Along with privilege eventually comes accountability (I'm thinking of a certain unfortunate golf celebrity here...) Along with power comes either incredible blessing....or incredible corruption (why is it so often the latter rather than the former?)

All that to say, if there is a God, and if he allowed Free Will, then it meant He was entrusting us with responsibility, power, and authority. He expected us to be wise with what we were given, and to be careful how we handled such a daunting task.

And here's the rub: along with this gift (or curse?) of Free Will comes the commitment on His part NOT  to intervene when we mess up, drop the ball, mistreat our neighbors, neglect the hungry, declare war on other countries, kill, torture and maim each other, or pollute and destroy the planet with avarice ("an insatiable greed for riches; inordinate, miserly desire to gain and hoard wealth").

I mean, it raises such interesting questions....

- If He insisted on overriding our bad decisions, be they individual or international, He'd be interfering in our Free Will, wouldn't He?

- If He continually intervened in our daily affairs, would we still feel as though we had Free Will? Obviously not.

- If He began doing invasive things (such as striking people dead for heinous behavior), where would He draw the line? Which acts would deserve a death blow and which would earn a mere slap? Who would get whacked, and who would get spared?

- If we saw that God was showing His love for mankind by intervening in large scale acts of cruelty, but doing nothing on issues that hurt us in any way (punishing the person who ripped us off financially, insulted us, or didn't fill up the gas tank after we lent them our car), would we accuse Him of being unloving and choose to distance ourselves from Him?

And so on.

Also, it always fascinates me that people who never seem to turn their hearts towards God in the least but instead use His Name as a curse word in any and every situation, may well be the ones who get angry at Him when something goes wrong in their lives and He doesn't come through as they demand or expect He should.

Or they'll say, "Look at Somalia! Look at Rwanda! Where the &%@# was God in all that !*&#??? Where is He when people are slaughtering each other? And where is He when all these innocent little kids are dying of starvation?"

In answer to the last question about famine, He's probably where He's always been during famine: looking down at the human race, shaking His head, and wondering why on earth we don't organize our resources with the more-than-ample food supply we have, draw on the more-than-sufficient resource of scientists, agriculturalists, ecological experts and the like, sacrifice gladly parts of our wealth and our riches, and feed the world's hungry.

I mean, why should He do for us what we are well able to do for ourselves, assuming we weren't so greedy?

Anyways, those are some of my random musings tonight....some lighthearted thoughts as I lie here pondering my possible destiny with cancer. And I guess I'm realizing that it's a big part of why I've never even for a minute been angry with God for being sick.

- God didn't pollute my country - we did that.

- He didn't invent Kraft Slices - we did that (am I going to get sued for brand name dropping?)

- He didn't inject food with MSG, glutamate, hydrolyzed protein, sodium caseinate, nitrates, acesulfame-potassium and the like...we did that, and I'm just one of millions reaping the consequences of those bad decisions.

I don't believe God gave me cancer, and I don't believe He's in the habit of automatically rescuing us from the bad decisions that cause cancer (even if they weren't specifically my choices). So I'm not mad at Him.

I don't believe He loves women in Asia more than He loves me, even though women there get breast cancer far less than we do here in the West.

At the end of the day, it boils down to geography and genes. And while I am blessed in many, MANY other ways and am very grateful for my blessings, when it comes to cancer, I just ain't particularly blessed in either the geography or the genes department. That's just the way it is.

What God does promise to do (in my books, anyways, or should I say, in my Book) is to walk through all of this with me, to comfort me, and to be my strength. And that, my friends, is good enough for me.

Well, I think I'm done in the area of philosophizing for tonight. 

May you have a great sleep, a super-duper week, and I will blog again when I'm up to it (whenever that is)   :-)

BLESSED BE YOUR NAME    Matt Redman 

Blessed Be Your Name
In the land that is plentiful 
Where Your streams of abundance flow
Blessed be Your name

Blessed Be Your name
When I'm found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed Be Your name

Every blessing You pour out 
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say

Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

Blessed be Your name
When the sun's shining down on me
When the world's 'all as it should be'
Blessed be Your name

Blessed be Your name
On the road marked with suffering 
Though there's pain in the offering 
Blessed be Your name

Every blessing You pour out 
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say

Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord, blessed be Your name