The time to read God's Word - to let it dwell in your heart and soul and marinate - is not when the lightning is flashing and thunder is booming and the world is coming apart. The time to read God's Word is when all is well - or at least a few things are well with the world and we have five minutes every other day or so to spend with God. Then, when the lightning flashes and thunder booms and world comes apart - instead of running away to find a Bible and frantically thumb through it hoping to find some good news - we run toward the lightning and the thunder as the world comes apart because we know "nothing can separate us from the love of God we have in Christ Jesus, our Lord." It doesn't mean we have all the answers - it means we know who does and He is holding us in His hands.

God does not give answers - He gives Himself. He is the answer. He is the Word we seek, the One that will fell satan.

To sentimentalize something is to cling to how we feel about something or someone instead of holding to the truth. The greatest challenge is accepting that WE are the problem. We may try to point to a particular person or group or church or belief system and how they need correcting - but the truth is none of us are perfect and we all need correcting. That is why Jesus left heaven, get born in a stable, dealt with all our garbage, suffered, died and got resurrected. He didn't do it for "them" - He did it us in the extreme plural.

Sin and grace, lostness and foundness, darkness and light, pain and joy - we divide the world up by these things - but the truth is - where these things come together, that's where the Gospel happens.

We carry around the darkness and sin and pain of this world like a snail carries his shell. We know it's there - but we don't have to look it. We feel the weight of the shell but can still pretend it isn't there. We occasionally try to slide underneath something and discover we don't fit because our shell is too big - but even then we just look for another way in rather than deal with the reality of our shell.

The Christian faith is based on death and resurrection. We die and we rise again. Not just when we take our last breath, but every single time we confess our sins we die to those things that would suck us into the darkness forever - and then God raises us up again and again to new life. At least that is the way it is supposed to work - but sometimes we get sidetracked - and instead of dying and rising, we spend our time pointing out the sins of others and making fun of them so we don't have to deal with the pain and pressure of our sinful shell.