late night blogging

just got back from watching War of the Worlds with the studious Glenn Johnson and not its almost 1:00 a.m. and my mind is thinking. The first thing I do when I'm online is check Palmer's blog for updates and this is what I found tonight:

"Tomorrow morning at 10 am I will be discharged from the hospital and moved to a full time rehabilitation center where I will learn such basic functions as walking, dressing myself, and keeping my head up high in public. The rehab hospital I will be in is Dodd Hall which is only 1 block away from where I am now. The excellence of this hospital is recognized around the country. Unfortunately, it all comes with a price...my treatment will be $2,000 a day and 80% of that needs to be paid up front because of our insurance issues (a total of $16,000). We came up with the initial $6,000 this afternoon. We have another $6,000 due on Friday and $4,000 due next Tuesday. We currently cannot afford to make that second $6,000 payment or the following $4,000. So, once again we need God to directly intervene on our behalf, because I need this rehab in order to walk again and to be able to function in my daily schedule." -Palmer

I have thoughts that I just don't understand. Coming out of the movie, my mind brought me to Psalm 8, "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?" At first I found this poetic, just to sit back and reflect on how Great God is and how small we are. How completely and wholly Other He is, nothing like our feebleness. And yet . . . He cares.

But how does He care? Sometimes I have no freaking clue. Why, why, why, why does Palmer have to suffer? His last 3 years have been suffering and yet he's a servant. And now just to get better, he is faced with bills that are way out of any of our means. Many of us have exhausted our resources to try and raise $ and encourage the Palmers and yet our funds are well short of their need. When I quit vocational ministry, I cut my salary by 66% just for the opportunity to plant missional communities. I'm not the only one, many of us are just getting by financially. So when these kind of needs come, we have very little to pull from. But what about God who has this mysterious way of caring? His table is known to be limitless with resources, yet we toil, struggle and watch our brother suffer.

I know it seems so unspiritual to doubt at times but why does Job 7 exist? "Therefore I will not keep silent; I will speak out in the anguish of my spirit, I will complain in the bitterness of my soul . . . What is man that you make so much of him, that you give him so much attention, that you examine him every morning and test him every moment?" Is all of this a test? A cosmic exam to pass? I wonder and I wonder why His caring is so mysterious. I know the ending of Job, I've read it a few times before, I understand its wisdom but its all still mysterious. I know that if you ask God a bunch of questions that you better be ready for some in return like "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?" The only way to answer that question is to become quite feeble and small. That isn't the issue, the issue is He said He cares, but why is His caring so mysterious and why must His servant suffer?

Sometimes these questions are poetic and beautiful, and sometimes they just haunt the inside of my soul.

peace to you on this late night,