{"id":2460,"date":"2023-03-21T09:17:41","date_gmt":"2023-03-21T13:17:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=2460"},"modified":"2023-03-21T09:18:24","modified_gmt":"2023-03-21T13:18:24","slug":"acts-316-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/21\/acts-316-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Acts 3:16, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to this reflection as a podcast, <\/em>click here<\/a>.

Every day during this season of Lent we\u2019re looking at one of the \u201c3:16\u201d verses of the Bible, spotlighting some of the significant theological statements that happen to fall on the 16th<\/sup> verse of the third chapter of a number of Old and New Testament books. <\/em>
 
\u201cBy faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus\u2019 name and the faith that comes through him that has completely healed him, as you can all see” (Acts 3:16).
 
The Bible\u2019s accounts of the signs and wonders that accompany the growth of the early church are inspiring.
 
They\u2019re also exasperating.  If God really exists, and if he heals the sick, why doesn\u2019t he do this all time? 
 
Why are there intensive care units?  Why is there a special row of graves for young children in my small town\u2019s cemetery?  If God performs miracles, why do some of the most wonderful people we know linger for years as their bodies are gradually claimed by cancer or ALS or any number of other merciless diseases?
 
More than anything else we want to know: Why doesn\u2019t God tell us why?<\/em> 

Author and journalist Philip Yancey wrote Where is God When it Hurts? \u2013 his bestseller on the problem of pain \u2013 when he was 27 years old.  When he was well into his 60s, he wrote a sequel.  It\u2019s called The Question that Never Goes Away.  That title says it all.  Yancey admits that the answers he hears most often from Christians only seem to make things worse.
 
Why are you suffering? 
 
God is punishing you.<\/em>
No, it\u2019s Satan!<\/em>
Neither: God has afflicted you out of love, not punishment, for you\u2019ve been specially selected to demonstrate faith.<\/em>
No, God wants you healed!<\/em>
 
In his book Hating God, Bernard Schweizer, a professor of English at Long Island University in Brooklyn, describes \u201cmisotheists\u201d \u2013 people who admit that God exists, but who refuse to worship him.  God may be there, but he\u2019s doing a lousy job of running the universe.  Therefore they despise him.   
 
Scripture, amazingly, never seems to come to God\u2019s rescue.
 
Job, the central character in the Bible\u2019s most extended discussion of suffering, never learns why his life is falling apart \u2013 even when he has a private audience with God in the closing chapters.  We never learn the \u201cwhy\u201d of pain in Ecclesiastes, the Old Testament\u2019s tortured reflections on the apparent meaninglessness of life.  Paul, the New Testament\u2019s preeminent theologian, never gets around to answering the question that never goes away.  Nor does Jesus.  Even though he exudes God\u2019s healing power like no one else \u2013 restoring sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, mobility to the lame, and restoration of life to at least three people who have died \u2013 he never tells us why such gifts aren\u2019t given to everyone. 
 
Instead of tackling the Why of suffering and the Why Not of universal healing, the Bible\u2019s authors tend to direct us to the What Next.
 
Our call is to weep with those who weep.  To come alongside those who are hungry, in prison, and mistreated.  To intercede for the widow and the orphan.  To care for the sick and the dying.
 
That\u2019s not to say we don\u2019t find powerful hints about the meaning of supernatural interventions on the pages of Scripture.
 
\u201cSigns and wonders\u201d tend to happen at four critical junctures in Bible history.  The first accompanies God\u2019s deliverance of his people from slavery in Egypt.  Then come the ministries of the prophets Elijah and Elisha, when spiritual unfaithfulness threatens Israel\u2019s very future.  Next we see healings and miracles associated with the life of Jesus, culminating in his resurrection.  Finally, there are the dramatic events that fuel the rapid growth of the first century church, which is exemplified by Acts 3:16.  When God is doing something new, in other words, he is \u2013 at least for a while \u2013 spectacularly visible. 
 
Missionaries have long noticed that supernatural events tend to cluster around the opening of new mission fields.  One source suggests that as many as 90% of the conversions to Christianity in China within the past 50 years (which comprise what may be the greatest evangelistic explosion in church history) have been influenced by a healing or a miracle.
 
But what about the fact that that so many of the people for whom we fast and pray don\u2019t seem to receive the healing they seek?  If God can sweep all their suffering away, why doesn\u2019t he do so?
 
Despite the confident claims of certain preachers, there is no biblical teaching that God is obligated to eradicate all our pain in this world.   
 
But we do receive God\u2019s assurances that all our pain will be redeemed.   
 
Author and professor Douglas Groothuis (pronounced GROTE-hice) distinguishes between meaningless suffering and inscrutable suffering.  Meaningless suffering has no point.  When Cambridge biologist Richard Dawkins, one of the so-called New Atheists, says that the meaning of life is that \u201csome people get lucky and some people don\u2019t,\u201d he\u2019s describing suffering that has neither purpose nor explanation.  Inscrutable suffering, on the other hand, is pain that we simply don\u2019t understand.  At least not yet.
 
Yancey declares, \u201cWe have only the stubborn hope \u2013 so different from na\u00efve optimism \u2013 that the story of Jesus, which includes both death and resurrection, gives a bright clue to what God will do for the entire planet.\u201d  He adds, \u201cFaith, I\u2019ve concluded, means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse.\u201d 
 
Groothuis knows deep pain from personal experience.  His wife, Becky, has suffered for years from a degenerative neurological disease called aphasia \u2013 the same condition currently afflicting actor Bruce Willis.  Doug was once asked, if he were God, whether he would immediately heal Becky.  Here\u2019s his answer:
 
\u201cThat\u2019s fallacious thinking.  God is perfect, and he acts accordingly.  If I were God, I\u2019d be perfect \u2013 and therefore I\u2019d act in the very same way he does.  We might not understand why he does what he does, but it\u2019s folly to think we\u2019d do things better.\u201d
 
Ultimately, we have to make peace with the fact that we don\u2019t always hear the Why we so desperately want to hear.
 
But we do hear something else.  We hear God\u2019s own Son crying out on the cross, \u201cWhy<\/em>, why, why?<\/em>  My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?\u201d (Matthew 27:46)
 
No other religion or philosophy offers anything like this.  God doesn\u2019t just notice our pain.  Or acknowledge our pain.  God shares our pain.  God understands why we ask why \u2013 because Jesus himself asked why.  Yancey points out that God has chosen, for whatever reason, to respond to suffering and evil not by waving a magic wand and making it disappear, but by absorbing it in into his own person.  On this cursed planet, even God has suffered the loss of a child.
 
Dame Cicely Saunders, the founder of the modern hospice movement, adds, \u201cGod does not prevent the hard things that happen in this free and dangerous world, but instead shares them with us all.\u201d
 
That means, in the end, the questions that swirl around Acts 3:16 can only really be addressed by the verse that launched our whole series \u2013 John 3:16, which we\u2019ll consider at last on Good Friday. 
 
In his book The Case for Miracles<\/em>, which we cited yesterday, Lee Strobel asks Doug Groothuis what he would say if a student ran into him on campus and said, \u201cHey, Professor Groothuis, how are you doing?\u201d
 
\u201cWell, of course I\u2019d tell them the truth,\u201d he replied. 
 
\u201cI\u2019m hanging by a thread.  But fortunately, the thread is knit by God.\u201d<\/em>

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To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here. Every day during this season of Lent we\u2019re looking at one of the \u201c3:16\u201d verses of the Bible, spotlighting some of the significant theological statements that happen to fall on the 16th verse of the third chapter of a number of Old and New Testament books.  \u201cBy faith in the name of… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2461,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[571],"class_list":["post-2460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-316-verses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2460"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2463,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2460\/revisions\/2463"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}