Cleaning System of a Down

Well, as you might have guessed from my exceedingly witty title, our cleaning system at work is currently down, which means our team is unable to do any work.  This also means that I have some time to write an entry here.

I read Ezekiel 35 this morning.  Ezekiel is a pretty angry book, in that God continually says that He will destroy people and nations.  Chapter 35 is a prime example of this.  It is composed of three wrathful paragraphs, and each closes with these words:

"Then you will know that I am the LORD."
"Then you will know that I am the LORD."
"Then they will know that I am the LORD."

I've always wondered why God feels the need to always say this, and why He always says this after He talks about destroying people for doing wrong.  Why couldn't He talk of how He will show mercy, grace, and forgiveness to sinful nations and then close with saying, "Then they will know that I am the LORD."  That sounds more like our God of grace to me.

But this morning, as I cogitated this chapter, I thought that maybe I'm reading these words wrong.  Maybe whenever God says these words, He puts a sarcastic emphasis on the "Then," so that He is always saying, "Then you will know that I am the LORD."

Whenever good things happen to us, who do we look to thank and praise?  The very nice and tidy answer would be "God, of course!" and I don't doubt that for Christians many times this is true.  But in our heart of sinful hearts, we cannot help but to give at least a smidgen of the credit to ourselves.  We cannot help but to think that we earned those grades, that we worked our way up to that position and salary, that we deserve man's praise for our good deeds.

In essence, when good things happen to and for us, it becomes exceedingly difficult to know and acknowledge that God is the LORD, because somehow we confuse ourselves to be divine.

But, what happens when bad things happen to us?  For Christians and non-Christians alike, we immediately blame God.  It's all His fault and never ours, because after all, He controls everything, right?

Surely God is aware of this, and maybe this is why He might sarcastically say, "Then you will know that I am the LORD."

And He is right in saying this.  The one good thing that arises out of our blaming God for bad things is that we confess that there is a God, and that He is that God.  In those times we know without a doubt that He is the LORD, though we might have doubts about His kindness.

C.S. Lewis says that pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world.  When we are roused by pain, we can't help but to acknowledge that God is God, and this is the silver lining to the cloud of blame that shrouds our hearts when this pain comes.

It's almost as if God is drawing out reluctant recognition from the hearts, lips, and minds of everyone, including those that hate Him.  For some of these, He will even use pain and these reluctant acknowledgments in order to take them from just knowing that He is the LORD to knowing Him.

And, well, that does sound like our God of grace to me.

"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." - C.S. Lewis

"God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain." - C.S. Lewis

"But from our present point of view it ought to be clear that the real problem is not why some humble, pious, believing people suffer, but why some do not.  Our Lord Himself, it will be remembered, explained the salvation of those who are fortunate in this world only by referring to the unsearchable omnipotence of God." - C.S. Lewis