I recently have become familiar with the fabulous ministry of Women at Risk, International. WAR works primarily with women around the world who have been rescued out of human trafficking, or are at risk of being caught up in sexual slavery.

The last time I was in Grand Rapids, I visited their store where they sell amazing handmade items crafted by the women in their safehouses. These women have been taught trades and skills to allow them to make a better life for themselves and escape the cycles that landed them in slavery to begin with. WAR strives to keep their administrative costs low so that 90% of their profits go straight back into the ministry.

It is a powerful ministry – I encourage you to read more about it here.

Right now WAR has an ebay store full of gorgeous handblown glass Christmas ornaments. I saw these in person and they are so beautiful – I really cannot believe that they are selling them for $15 each! These auctions end tomorrow night, so please take a moment to go check them out and consider purchasing one or more or as Christmas gifts. Not only will you have a beautiful ornament for years to come, but you will be supporting a ministry that brings the love of Christ and real hope to women who desperately need it.

Oh, and did I mention that they are beautiful??

If you’d like to browse the other amazing items they sell, check out their “WAR chest” online store.

In our last post, God is good, but life is still hard, we started looking at Solomon’s lament in the book of Ecclesiastes – “vanity of vanities! All is vanity!” We defined vanity as referring to futility, frustration, limitation, and ultimately death which every person experiences as a result of living in a sin-cursed world.

In order to continue on through Ecclesiastes, as well as to continue to flesh out our understanding of pain and loss, we need to go way back to Genesis 3 and look at exactly what this “sin-cursed world” is suffering from.

When Adam and Eve made that universe-altering choice to rebel against God, they were consumed with shame (Gen. 3:7-8), they spiritually died and were separated from God (3:8-10), and their relationship with one another was broken by sin and blame (3:11-13). The effects of the physical curse mirror the spiritual rebellion and death that have already occurred – they died spiritually, now they will die physically. They rebelled against God, now their “domains” will rebel against them – the earth and the creatures in it will rebel against their rule, work will be frustrating and difficult, the woman will rebel against the man’s headship, her children will cause her pain and difficulty.

The curse is like a mirror reflecting the spiritual reality that we cannot see. When my garden is overrun with weeds and pests, it is a physical picture of my own deep-rooted sinfulness that must be constantly subdued or it will take a choke-hold in my heart. When my children rebel and back-talk, they act out for me my own rebellion against God. When my body gets sick, when I am surrounded by struggles with death and decay, I am faced with the harsh reality that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. He has placed eternity in our hearts (Ecc. 3:11), so when physical life is cut short we know that something just isn’t right.

You see, there’s a reason that death and suffering doesn’t sit well with us. We weren’t made for this. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Paradise has been lost.

Solomon, just like us, wrestles with many things in the book of Ecclesiastes. He shares with us the deep angst in his soul over death, sin and injustice, and lack of satisfaction and purpose in life. Ecclesiastes is an unflinchingly honest cry from the heart – one that I appreciate and resonate with more and more the more life I see.

Tomorrow we’ll start looking at Solomon’s specific “complaints” about this life under the sun. In the meantime, I’d love to hear back from you – is this series touching a chord in your own life? Let’s get real: life is hard.

All the posts in this series are indexed here.

Image from wikipedia

Yesterday I introduced a topic that we’ll be looking at for a while together – how do we construct a theological framework which helps us to make sense of pain and loss? This is no easy task. I surely am not thinking that we are going to settle this in everyone’s minds forever – but I do believe that as we open the Word of God with an open heart, we get a glimpse of the bigger picture.

To begin our dig into Scripture, let’s crack open the book of Ecclesiastes together. Often avoided, this book has become one of my favorites. I can’t wait to look at it with you!

Back when I was a tenth grader at a Christian school, we often liked to joke with our geometry teacher (who was also our Bible teacher) and write Ecclesiastes 1:2 on our test papers.

“Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”

Doesn’t that verse just fill you with hope? :)

I think that much of the confusion regarding the book of Ecclesiastes stems from the way the NIV has translated this word. “Meaningless” is really a very insufficient term. The KJV, NKJV, ESV, and NASB (maybe others – I haven’t checked them all!) all translate this term as vanity – “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”

This begs the question – what is vanity?

John MacArthur summarizes that there are three basic ways that the term “vanity” is used in the book of Ecclesiastes. It refers to:
• Transience – the vapor-like nature of life
• Futility – focuses on the cursed condition of the earth and its effects on our lives
• Incomprehensibility – life’s unanswerable questions and the mystery of God’s purposes

In other words: vanity refers to futility, frustration, limitation, and ultimately death which every person experiences as a result of living in a sin-cursed world.

Right there, I want to yell this out with Solomon. He wrestled with pain and loss and death and frustration just like we do. I think he was angry about death – it wasn’t supposed to be this way, and it stinks! I think he was frustrated by the brokenness of living life as sinful people in a cursed world, where righteousness and wickedness did not always seem to be getting appropriate consequences. And I think he, like the rest of us, recognized that there is much which is simply incomprehensible – God’s ways are not our ways.

Solomon’s book echoes the thought of my heart recently – life is hard. God is good, but life is still hard.

Hard, but not meaningless.

To be continued…

All the posts for this series are indexed here.

The older I get and the more life I experience, the more I understand that we are all wounded people. Wounded by life, wounded by the consequences of our own sinful choices, wounded by others, wounded by evil.

Some wounds are more debilitating than others. Some have been healed and leave only scars behind. Some are still raw and open, oozing under layers of protective bandages we hope others won’t see. But we all have them.

Abandonment
Abuse
Abortion
Addictions
Death
Disease
Divorce
Hate
Injury
Injustice
Mental illness
Miscarriage
Natural disasters
Neglect
Rejection…

Many others could be added to the list.

At some point as we journey through this broken world, we must wrestle seriously and intentionally to answer the age-old question, “how could a good God allow this?” Whether we wrestle with it because we ourselves need an answer to this question, or whether we wrestle with it because the wounded around us are asking, it is imperative that we consider it.

I am convinced that our God is not only good, but that His Word contains satisfying answers to this question that will allow us to trust Him, praise Him, serve Him through the storms of life that will surely come.

In coming weeks we will be devoting a lot of time to working through two books in Scripture that are essential to constructing a theological perspective on pain, loss, evil – wounds of all kinds. We will first listen to Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, wrestle with the vanity of life in Ecclesiastes. Then we will move on and sit with Job in the ashes of his life.

Bring your wounds – our God is big enough, His grace is deep enough, His Word is rich enough.

All of the posts for this series are indexed here.

Image from wikipedia