{"id":4731,"date":"2025-07-08T09:15:02","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T13:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=4731"},"modified":"2025-07-08T09:17:53","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T13:17:53","slug":"into-the-furnace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/08\/into-the-furnace\/","title":{"rendered":"Into the Furnace"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

Religious pat answers simply won\u2019t do.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0

The questions are edgy and demanding:\u00a0Where was God when the waters of the Guadalupe River were rising more than 30 feet in a span of 90 minutes early last Friday morning?\u00a0

If God is really there, how can he bear <\/em>the loss of more than 100 people, along with the life-altering sadness that now shrouds their families?\u00a0

As we look at the pictures of the little girls who were attending Camp Mystic \u2013 those whose bodies have been found and those who are still missing \u2013 how is it possible that God chose not to answer their desperate prayers?

When things go wrong and life falls apart, it\u2019s not unusual for people to want to fire God.

We could do it as simply as axing an incompetent personal assistant.\u00a0Is this any way to run a universe? <\/em>Or we can go to social media and un-friend God \u2013 to remind him that his performance is utterly unacceptable.

Does God have anything to say for himself?

On the pages of Scripture we find stories that help us begin to take in a larger picture.

One of them is Daniel 3:1-30, where life comes crashing down on the heads of three young men.\u00a0Their names are Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They\u2019re forced to make a choice:\u00a0bow before the egomaniacal king of Babylon instead of God, or be thrown into a fiery furnace \u2013 an ordeal which they cannot possibly survive.\u00a0

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego reaffirm their trust in God, knowing it\u2019s a death sentence.\u00a0Into the furnace they go.

But then something happens.\u00a0To the shock of everyone, the furnace doesn\u2019t kill them.\u00a0The king himself can see them walking around inside.\u00a0

And then he sees something else:\u00a0There\u2019s a fourth person, whom the king describes as \u201ca son of the gods,\u201d walking alongside them. They ultimately emerge unscathed.

In a world that is ravaged by mass shootings, wars, cancers, and flash floods, all of us go into the furnace from time to time.\u00a0

As author and pastor Tim Keller points out, most of us then want to pick one of three options. We\u2019d like to run around the furnace \u2013 to avoid<\/strong> it, if at all possible.\u00a0Or maybe we can just race right through it \u2013 to deny<\/strong> how dreadful it is.\u00a0Or maybe we should just lie down in the middle of the pain, and give in to despair<\/strong>.\u00a0Yet none of these options is realistic or hopeful.

So what can we learn from God\u2019s Word that brings us hope? \u00a0

We discover that God is in the middle of everything, even when he can\u2019t be seen:\u00a0\u201cWhen you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze\u201d (Isaiah 43:2).

Scripture reminds us that we live in a broken world.

There\u2019s no getting around that.\u00a0We are daily faced with broken bodies, broken psyches, broken promises, broken relationships, and broken dreams.

But this world is not broken beyond repair.\u00a0

So, where was God last Friday morning?\u00a0God was with everyone on the banks of the Guadalupe River. This morning he weeps with their families.\u00a0And he weeps with us.

But how can God bear <\/em>all this?

At the center of the Christian story we find this strange mystery:\u00a0God did <\/em>bear all this.\u00a0On the cross.\u00a0The worst thing that could ever have happened to Jesus \u2013 the violence that ended his life \u2013 is in fact the best thing that ever happened to a broken world.\u00a0

Nowhere are we promised supernatural deliverance<\/em>\u00a0from every experience of pain.

But God is good, and he is able to make supernatural use<\/em> of even our\u00a0worst pains to bring about\u00a0twists and turns we could never have experienced otherwise.

God is able to transform disasters into hopeful events, and even horrendous moral evils into redemptive happenings.\u00a0God is steering world events – as well as\u00a0the events in your own life – in such a way that we will all, in the end,\u00a0be stunned by his wisdom.\u00a0

What do we do now?

We keep walking, one step at a time.

God directs us in Psalm 23 not to run from trouble, nor to be stopped in our tracks by despair, but to go through<\/u><\/em> the Valley of the Shadow of Death.\u00a0And that means weeping, hoping, praying, and trusting \u2013 putting one foot in front of the other.

And as we walk, we will discover soon enough that we\u2019re never in the furnace alone.

The Son of God is walking with us.
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here Religious pat answers simply won\u2019t do.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 The questions are edgy and demanding:\u00a0Where was God when the waters of the Guadalupe River were rising more than 30 feet in a span of 90 minutes early last Friday morning?\u00a0 If God is really there, how can he bear the loss of more… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4732,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[953,112,501],"class_list":["post-4731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-shadrack","tag-suffering","tag-theodicy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4731","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=4731"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4734,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4731\/revisions\/4734"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}