Month: January 2016

What if God said, “I’m Calling in Sick?”

Tom Knuppel Other

What would happen if God took a day off? What would you do if you knew that just for one day you couldn’t have access to the Creator of all that is known and unknown?  Can you imagine what nonsense and horror that might occur if the “gates of hell” got advance notice of the time and length of God’s one-day vacation from the responsibilities He carries? Can any of us fathom what it might be like to sit alone in the middle of the night, tears flowing down our face, and there is no God of the universe to share our innermost thoughts with? Can any of us contemplate the emptiness that would be evident with each new baby born on that day when there is no God to say “thank you” to? I really wonder what all of us “believers” and “skeptics” would do if God took one little day off.
I suspect that one of the biggest challenges of being the one, true, living, and eternal God is that you can’t, like in a basketball game, look down the bench, and signal for the guy at the end of the bench to go to the scorer’s table and check into the game. God’s it. There is no other. There is no substitute. There’s not even one old grizzled veteran that can be called to come out of retirement to substitute for the Divine. It’s either God or nobody.
So, if God knows there is no other entity to take the Creator’s place, two things come to my mind immediately. First, if we were to think in human terms, there is a tremendous amount of pressure and responsibility when it comes to taking care of God’s creation. Second, I truly wonder what the reaction would be when it became clear that for just one day there would be no hope of any connection or communication to this creating and sustaining God?
It certainly isn’t unusual for a person who feels overworked and underappreciated to take a day off from the grind of his or her working life. There must be a million people who every once in a while have decided to give into the perceived need to rest, recuperate, and relax from the pressures of life. Taking an unscheduled day off every once in a while is actually a good thing; we cannot go on indefinitely without an outlet for the frustrations of the working world.
I wonder what it would be like if God just simply decided, “I’ve had enough with these foolish creatures! I’m calling in sick on Thursday.”

 

Leap into the Fray

Tom Knuppel Society
Leap into the Fray

The headlines this past year have not been, by and large, what I would call very encouraging. In some ways, it’s easy to see think our American culture in particular is rapidly spinning out of control; the erosion of moral absolutes – widely-agreed-upon standards that were once common – has left a thick cloud of confusion where once we could clearly see the difference between “right” and “wrong.”

As the depressing headlines stack up, it’s easy to despair…or at least succumb to the temptation to withdraw into whatever form of “safety” we believe we can construct for our lives. The preponderance of bad news not only numbs our souls to the pain of others, but mixed in as it is with an elevated sense of fear for our own physical safety, it’s entirely understandable that we might be tempted to give up, grab what comfort and security we can, and let someone else fix what’s wrong with the world.

But if I am understanding the teaching of Scripture at all, however, it is precisely when things are going south that Christians, as part of their calling, should not only resist the urge to self-soothe but, quite to the contrary, leap into the fray.