God, please help.

Today's Photo: "Close"

Julie's funeral will be in Iowa on Tuesday.
I will head down to Iowa on Monday night to be there for the visitation.
And then preside over the funeral on Tuesday.
I am really sad that Julie died.

It doesn't feel real. So young. 54.
I hate strokes.

This morning in Bible study, the group had a million gigantic God questions. Did God condone violence? Did God change from the New Testament to the Old Testament? Who really wrote the Bible? Why is there so much violence in the Bible? How do we know the answers to these questions? Who's talking in these passages: the prophets? Or God? Or God through the prophets? Or are the prophets talking for God and maybe that's not really what God wanted them to say?

Due to the fact that I don't know answers to big God questions, we spent a lot of time talking about "mystery."

Maybe I'll turn out to be be a pretty ineffective pastor; I'm not sure - the truth is, I'm always telling me to embrace the freedom they have as explorers of faith to ask questions. I tell them to ask questions to one another - to ask them to God - to ask them to their pastors and family members. Very rarely do I provide singular, explicit answers to God questions.

The thing is: I'd be a wannabe pastor if I did attempt to answer those kinds of questions. I'd be a big, cheesy, phony Pastor. Because, for better or for worse, I don't know the answers.

Here's the truth:
*Sometimes I can't tell whether its God speaking through the prophets,
or it's just the prophets trying to make sense of a senseless world.
*I don't know why we live in a world where some people have too much and some have too little.
*I don't know why sometimes wonderful people have brains that start to bleed.

I just don't know.

But I do know a few things. And on days like today, I cling to them.
*Music soothes the human heart.
*Words love to be read.
*Human relationships are imperative and necessary and a gift.
*God welcomes our confusion, our doubt, and our anger with open arms.
*It's okay not to know.
*God listens. Always.
*Sometimes time is like Aloe vera for the soul.