About Me
I am first a person whose journey with God and others is the orienting center of my life. I seek to share openly of this halting, faltering discovery of the story of God in everyday living.
I can be contacted personally at earthlytents@comml.imap.cc
After 22 1/2 years as a pastor of a Philadelphia area church, and almost two years in New Zealand at Laidlaw College in Auckland, New Zealand, I am located in Dallas, Texas, as the International Director of ALARM (African Leadership and Reconciliation Ministries). ALARM is an organization that seeks to restore communities that have been devastated by tribalism and warfare.
My wife, Naomi, is an amazing person with whom I share my journey. I am blessed with two special children whom I love and admire--Ben, a web designer living in San Francisco Rebekah, our daughter, a singer/actress in Texas.
My passions: reading, popcorn, writing, photography, walking, time with friends and family, thinking about the problem of evil and suffering, peace building and reconciliation, living out the gospel in a postmodern world.
As you do so well, you ask a lot of interesting questions and I think it makes a lot of sense.
Perhaps a different way of phrasing Augustine's statement is to say that time and space are merely part of God's awesome creation. We are bound by them for we are part of the same creation.
But how can we comprehend God who is beyond these concepts or, put differently, created these concepts. Perhaps, a feeble glimpse might come from a book called "Flatland", which is about life in a two-dimensional world. In that world, one of the inhabitants saw a circle suddenly appear, grow larger and larger and then grow smaller and smaller and finally disappear. What he experienced was a sphere intersecting his two-dimensional world and passing through it. Nothing in his limited understanding could adaquately explain it because he had no way of grasping a three dimensional world. So it is with us: How can we possibly grasp the world that exists outside the bounds of our world? Perhaps that is why when we think we have God in the box and all the answers worked out nicely that God confounds us and reminds us that He is God and we are not.
Your question about "Why?" is also a great one. One of the most encouraging answers that I have found is in C.S. Lewis's "The Horse and His Boy". In it, one of the characters remarks about what luck she had. A wise hermit replied "Daughter, I have lived a hundred and nine winters in this world and have never yet met any such thing as Luck. There is something about all this that I do not understand: but if ever we need to know, you may be sure that we shall." I like that simple acceptance that God is in control; he may tell us and if we need to know then he will tell us but whether he does or not it does not change the fact that he and not random chance is in control.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I found them to be profound and challenging when you were a pastor at Calvary and I still appreciate them now as they encourage me to look in and look around and see things that I might not otherwise have questioned and be the poorer for it.