As of Tuesday, the massive Waldo Canyon fire near Colorado Springs that has been burning since June 23, has consumed nearly 18,000 acres and is the most destructive in Colorado's history was reported as 55 percent contained. After days of high temperatures, drought and wind, which made fighting the blaze difficult, firefighters were helped this week by cooler temperatures and higher humidity.
Still, full containment isn't likely until July 12 at the earliest, officials say.
The conflagration, being fought by 1,581 firefighters, is believed to be responsible for two deaths. At its peak, more than 32,000 area residents were forced to flee their homes.
The Waldo Canyon fire is but one of several major wildfires ablaze in several Western states, all driven by high heat, low humidity and dry-as-tinder vegetation.
Rain, of course, would have helped in stopping these fires, but none was forthcoming. And David Ramsey, columnist at The Gazette newspaper in Colorado Springs, wants to know why God didn't send rain in response to the great many prayers requesting it. Ramsey said in a recent column that he'd heard from dozens of friends who said they were praying for his family, his home and his city, all of them petitioning God for rain.
So, "Where was the rain we all so desperately needed?" Ramsey asked.
For his column, Ramsey contacted two members of the Colorado Springs clergy for a response. One, Rev. Patty Walker of First Congregational Church, was among the evacuees and said she also prayed for rain. She told Ramsey, "You can't tell God how to respond. Even though it doesn't rain, it doesn't mean God isn't showing up. God has shown up in a million other ways."
Walker added, "We have a very involved God. I believe God is crying with people who lost their houses. ... There is a holy mystery around suffering."
Another pastor, Brady Boyd of New Life Church, said he had prayed "without ceasing" all week, and maintained that God had answered the prayers. He prayed for rain, for the firefighters and for the evacuees. The firefighters have performed amazing feats, Boyd said, and no one has died (it's not clear when the two reported deaths occurred). "We've received two out of three, and that's pretty amazing," Boyd said. "That's a miracle."
Ramsey closed his column repeating Boyd's claim of "two out of three" and asking, "Is that enough?"
More on this story can be found at these links:
Why Didn't God Deliver Badly Needed Rain? Gazette.com
Colorado Springs Fire: Progress, but Full Containment Is Days Off. LA Times
The Big Questions
1. What is
the purpose of prayer? Is there more than one purpose? Why have Christians over
the centuries affirmed its necessity and value? How do we know that we should
pray?
2. What does
it mean when we pray and the thing for which we ask God is not granted? What
does it mean when the opposite of what we ask occurs?
3. How do we
identify answers to prayer, especially when the seeming answer is not what we
have petitioned God for? Can "coincidence" be another term for
"answered prayer"? Explain your answer. Are all sincere prayers
answered in some way? If not, why not?
4. What do
you make of the "two out of three" explanation of answered prayer?
Does asking for some things that are likely to happen along with asking for
something less likely to happen make for a too-easy claim of answered prayer?
Why or why not?
5. What do
you make of the "holy mystery around suffering" explanation for
seemingly unanswered prayer? Is it an adequate view of God to say that God
cries with those who have lost their houses while also noting that God did not
prevent the loss? Is it "good enough" that God cries with us?
Confronting the News with Scripture
Here are some Bible verses to guide your discussion:
Psalm 115:3
"Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases." (For context read 115:1-11.)
It is very important to read this Bible verse in context. Taken by itself, it can make God sound capricious -- the sort of deity who, on a whim, lets Colorado burn while sparing Kansas from the flames. But that's not what this verse is saying. In context, it's referring to the superiority of Israel's God over the idols of surrounding nations. Those idols, says the psalmist, are "the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; they make no sound in their throats" (vv. 4-7). In other words, they are useless.
In contrast to those idols, the psalmist says, Israel's "God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases." This means that God is completely independent of human beings, neither made by mortals nor expected to do their bidding. The verse is a statement of God's sovereignty.
At the same time, however, the psalmist calls on Israel to give glory to God's name, "for the sake of [God's] steadfast love and ... faithfulness" (v. 1). With those words, the psalmist affirms God's character and nature. Yes, God is totally independent of humankind, but his nature is steadfast love and faithfulness, so he therefore does not act capriciously toward us.
Questions:
If God "does
whatever he pleases," what is the point of prayers of petition? Why even
bother to pray?
Genesis 4:4-5
"And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard." (For context, read 4:1-16.)
Although Bible commentators suggest that Abel's attitude or actions made his offering acceptable and Cain's attitude or actions made his intolerable, the text gives us no clue about why God received one offering and not the other. There is something of the same mystery as to why some prayers seem to be answered and some seem not to be.
Questions: Is prayer subject to statistics? In other
words, is it something we can keep track of, in a data base or a graph, where
"success" or "failure" can be charted? Why or why not? Have
you ever used the "success" of your prayers as examples of God's
faithfulness? Have you ever cited the "failure" of your prayers as
evidence of God's lack of regard for you? Are either of those accurate measures?
Explain.
Job 38:25-28
"Who has cut a channel for the torrents of rain, and a way for the thunderbolt, to bring rain on a land where no one lives, on the desert, which is empty of human life, to satisfy the waste and desolate land, and to make the ground put forth grass? Has the rain a father ...?" (For context, read 38:1--40:2.)
This is part of God's "non-answer" answer to Job's complaints about the undeserved woes that have befallen him. It's a non-answer in that God does not explain his purposes in allowing Job to suffer. It's a non-answer because God does not address Job's specific questions. It's a non-answer in that God responds by asking Job a series of rhetorical questions. But it's also an answer in that God gives Job a view of the bigger picture of creation, a larger context in which Job can view his own troubles. It's not an "answer to prayer" in the traditional meaning of the term, but it's a response that changes the picture about which Job is praying.
Questions: Does "God's perspective"
thinking help you when you are in the midst of trouble? Why or why not? Should
having a larger perspective give us more peace in the face of both answered and
unanswered prayer? When you are suffering and struggling, is your perspective
of the larger situation greater or lesser?
2 Chronicles 6:26-27
"When heaven is shut up and there is no rain because they have sinned against you, and then they pray toward this place, confess your name, and turn from their sin, because you punish them, may you hear in heaven, forgive the sin of your servants ... and send down rain upon your land ..." (For context, read 6:12-14, 22-40.)
These lines are from King Solomon's prayer at the time of the dedication of the first temple in Jerusalem. In verses 22-39, Solomon enumerates the many prayers that will be offered in or toward the temple in the years to come. Among those prayers, he expects, will be petitions for rain.
In the thinking of that time, any drought was assumed to be punishment from God because of sins of the people. Therefore, Solomon asks that in time of drought, God would forgive the sins of the people and send rain.
Questions: Most people today do not view drought or
natural disaster as divine punishment. But if they are simply the reality of
natural forces, why does God, whom we believe both loves us and has ultimate
control over nature, not keep those forces from destructive extremes? Are there
any "sins" of humankind that affect the weather today?
Matthew 5:45
"... so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous." (For context, read 5:43-48.)
Here in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells his followers to love their enemies as well as their neighbors, just as God sends the blessings of sun and rain on both righteous and unrighteous people.
Note that Jesus interprets God's use of the weather differently from how the Old Testament people did. There, if a drought occurred, the assumption was that it was punishment for sin. Here, however, Jesus sees the range of weather as occurrences independent of human morality.
Questions:
If God sends blessings of
sun and rain on people without regard to their morality, is it reasonable
that he allows natural disasters to fall on people without regard to their
morality as well? Is there anything that is unreasonable about it?
Matthew 7:7-8
"Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened." (For context, read 7:7-11.)
These are also words of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount, but taken out of context, they sound like the wording of a guarantee: Follow these instructions faithfully and you will get the desired results. The words seem to promise that we can receive anything we pray for if we pray with enough intensity and persistence.
Yet in context, that is not the intent of Jesus' words. In the Sermon on the Mount thus far, Jesus had already asked his hearers to live righteously, to forgo anger, to shun retaliation, to avoid lust, to love their enemies, to forgive those who injured them and to not be anxious about the future. We can imagine that some in the audience that day were thinking something like, "Well, Jesus, that's all very nice, but how am I going to do all those things? I can't even forgive my neighbor for making too much racket, so how am I going to love my enemy? And then there is anger and lust. I don't want those things, but they just overtake me. You might as well ask me to give up eating or breathing!"
Jesus, however, anticipates those questions, and so makes his comments about prayer. He tells his audience to just ask God. Ask for the ability to live righteously, to love one's neighbor, to forgive those who hurt them, and so on. Those are the qualities praying affects. In other words, Jesus tells them that the answer to prayer for themselves most often comes in the form of spiritual graces in their lives, not in God changing the course of events.
Questions:
What spiritual changes
have you experienced because of praying? Are spiritual changes more important
than the requests you made through prayer? How comforting is this when your
prayers were for the survival or health of those dear to you, and those prayers
are not answered?
James 5:16-18
"The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest." (For context, read 5:13-18.)
James is here referring to the Old Testament story about Elijah's confrontation with wicked King Ahab found in 1 Kings 17-18. James' point is not specifically about praying over the weather, but he sees the effect of Elijah's prayer as an example of the effect of prayer by the faithful in general.
If we go back and read the Old Testament account, we see that it is not clear whether Elijah's prayers actually caused the rain to stop and start or whether Elijah simply announced what God was doing. Nonetheless, James' point is that we should set no limits on the power of prayer, for it is far more powerful than people commonly think. He says to his readers: Are you suffering? Pray for help! Are you sick? Pray for healing! Are you a sinner? Pray for forgiveness! After all, he says, look what Elijah was able to accomplish even with the weather through prayer! James is not saying that the rest of us necessarily change the weather with our prayers. James is saying that we can count on God hearing our prayers no matter what the weather brings.
Question: Would you agree that in response to
prayer God either changes the circumstances or helps the pray-er get through
what he does not change? Why or why not?
For Further Discussion
1. Respond to
this, from David Ramsey's column: "In the end, our view of God's response
comes down to what we expect. If you truly expected a torrent of rain in
response to prayers, a torrent preventing this week's agony and confusion,
there's no doubt you're disappointed."
2. Is there
any usefulness to praying with an "It's worth a shot" mentality?
3. Should
repentance be part of prayers for rain? Why or why not?
4. Comment on
this, from Rev. James Berger, who has survived a hurricane, an earthquake and a
tsunami: He says that we sometimes confuse prayer with magic. "Prayer is
seeking to discern the will of God. Magic is seeking a means to manipulate the
fates/future/gods to bend them to doing our will. So, do we pray for
victory before the big game? Do we pray for victory before the battle? Rain, to
rescue us from fires that only threaten us because we built our homes in a fire
zone? Deliverance from earthquakes when we build on a fault line? Most of what
we say about prayer in our churches is really a magical wish. My will be done,
not thine. After all, my will is what matters."
5. Rev. Frank
Ramirez shares this: "A friend of mine spoke to me by phone about the dry
weather in her state. She felt guilty about her relief in this matter because
it meant that her sump pump would be able to handle the load and not be
overwhelmed by too much water, but the same week her pastor, who farms on the
side, asked everyone at the church to pray for rain because his crops needed it
badly. How do you suppose God prioritizes the needs of those in prayer? Whose
prayers should get priority? Is this subject to human standards?
"In the
movie Bruce Almighty, a TV newscaster (played by Jim Carrey) whose life
is falling apart cries aloud to God that the universe is unfair. God (played by
Morgan Freeman) invites him to take over answering prayer for a week. At one
point Carrey decides to save time and answer everyone’s prayer with a yes. The
result is that everyone whose prayer was to win the lottery is granted their
desire, but the big prize, divided up thousands of ways, results in awards of
just a few dollars.
"Game
theorists talk about the zero-sum game in which someone has to lose in order
for someone to win. Are there circumstances when prayer becomes a zero-sum
game? Does answering one prayer in the affirmative require another prayer to be
denied?"
6. Respond to
this: Rev. Stan Purdum tells of conducting a funeral for a young man who had
been killed as the innocent bystander during someone else's quarrel. When they
got to the cemetery, it was a bright sunny day. After the graveside service,
the brother of the deceased, overcome with grief, suddenly threw himself across
his brother's coffin, clutching it tightly and sobbing, "No. No. No."
Neither his family nor his friends nor the pastor could get him to release his
grip. While all this was occurring, the sky quickly darkened, and all at once,
a hard, driving downpour occurred, which finally caused the young man to let go
of the coffin and rejoin his family. Purdum says, "Given the
circumstances, the rain was providential. I've often thought that if we humans
had control over the weather, it could hardly have been put to a better use
than it was that day."
Responding to the News
This is an opportunity to think and learn about prayer. Rev. Nancy Lane points out that prayer is a relationship and conversation with God in which we also take time to listen for the response. She suggests these questions as a way to do that thinking:
1. Do we pray
for and accept God's will or pray for our will and disparage God when our will
isn't done?
2. Do we
expect God to rescue us from the consequences of our choices and behaviors?
She suggests that when the answer we want doesn't come, we should open ourselves to God's grace, help and strength to guide and sustain us through the situation. That, itself, she suggests, is an answer to prayer.
It may also be helpful to talk to church members who have been Christians for years and have lived through trouble. Ask them to describe what prayer meant to them during those times, as well as during times when all was going well.
Other News This Week
Hall of Fame Pitcher
Gives Up Trophies
Former Baltimore Orioles star pitcher Jim Palmer is auctioning off his three Cy Young Awards and two of his four Gold Gloves to convert his trophies into funds to help educate his grandchildren and provide care for his autistic stepson and charitable gifts to the autism project of Palm Beach County. "At this juncture of my life ... my priorities have changed," said the Hall of Famer.
"Certainly, when you talk about Cy Young Awards and Gold Gloves, these are the elite level of personal awards," said David Hunt, president of Hunt Auctions, which is taking bids on the trophies. People like Palmer who surrender such prizes "lived the moments, and their accomplishments are really the reward," Hunt remarked.
Palmer pitched on Baltimore's six pennant-winning teams and is the only pitcher in big-league history to win World Series games in three decades (1966, 1970-71, 1983). During his 19-year major league career of 575 games, Palmer compiled a 268-152 record with 2,212 strikeouts, a 2.86 ERA, 521 games started, 211 complete games and 53 shutouts in 3,948 innings, and never allowed a grand slam or back-to-back homers. He won 20 games in eight different seasons and won spots on six all-star teams and two ERA titles. He led the American League in victories three times and retired in 1984 as a member of the defending World Champions.
In 1966, Palmer became the youngest pitcher to win a complete-game, World Series shutout, defeating Sandy Koufax and the defending World Champion Los Angeles Dodgers, 6-0. The shutout was part of a World Series record-setting 33 1/3 consecutive shutout innings by Orioles pitchers.
The 17 years between his first World Series win in 1966 and his 1983 World Series win is the longest period of time between first and last pitching victories in the World Series for an individual pitcher in major league history. He was the first and only player in Orioles history to participate in all six (1966, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1979, 1983) of their World Series appearances. Palmer was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1990.
But Palmer, 66, says he doesn't need polished pieces of hardware to remind him of his accomplishments on the field. "To me, those are things that happened in the past. ... Whether I have the awards or not, it's not going to take those memories away. While I am immensely proud to have received these awards, that chapter of my life has passed," he said. "I am aware of people that love baseball and would treasure items like mine. Hopefully, these awards will bring happiness into baseball fans' lives and allow me to make a difference in my family's future."
More on this story can be found at these links:
Orioles Hall of Famer Jim Palmer Auctioning Off ... Awards. Baltimore Sun
Jim Palmer. Wikipedia
Bible Verses and Questions
1 Corinthians 9:25
"Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one." (For context, read 9:24-27.)
Jim Palmer apparently discovered that prizes he worked so hard for years to gain were not as important to him in the end as other things.
Question: Give examples of things you used to value
that are no longer important to you. What happened to make you change your
mind?
Matthew 6:19-21
"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (No further context needed.)
Luke 12:33
"Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven ..." (For context, read 12:22-34.)
Luke 18:18, 22
"A certain ruler asked him, 'Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?' ... When Jesus heard this, he said to him, 'There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.'" (For context, read 18:18-27.)
Questions: Why are treasures on earth ultimately
unsatisfying? Why does the heart yearn for treasure in heaven? How can you
"make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in
heaven"?
Matthew 13:44-46
"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it." (No further context needed.)
Palmer did not express regret over auctioning off his prized possessions; to the contrary, he seems genuinely joyful over the fact that he can use what he has to benefit others.
Questions: Why do some people cling to earthly
possessions while others find the act of giving away what they hold dear
liberating? What is worth so much that you would gladly sell everything you own
to attain it?
Matthew 12:35
"The good person brings good things out of a good treasure ..." (For context, read 12:33-37.)
Palmer apparently wants to transform his material treasures into something more intangible that will make a difference in the lives of others.
Questions: Is it possible to convert earthly goods
into heavenly treasure that will last forever? How can you do that?
1 John 2:15-17
"Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; for all that is in the world -- the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches -- comes not from the Father but from the world. And the world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live forever." (For context, read 2:7-17.)
Questions: What does the Bible say has eternal
value? Are you investing your time, talent and treasure in things that are
passing away, or in things that last forever?
For Further Discussion
Comment on
this: Rev. Charles Alkula says that the Palmer story could also be used to
teach congregations about the transient nature of the buildings they occupy.
For every historic building that deserves to be preserved for its architectural
significance, there are many more that are "white elephants" or
albatrosses that weigh down the potential ministry of a congregation and the
church.
Closing Prayer
We pray, O Lord, that your will might be done in all the places where fires rage. Be with those who battle the blazes, those who must flee from them and those who have responsibility for overseeing recovery. In Jesus' name. Amen.
Copyright 2012 Communication
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