We are in the middle of a very important campaign, our first since pre-pandemic days, to raise $20,000 for the Catch Ministry. To help us focus, we have chosen the GO LIVE theme anchored in the story of Ben Beamering from the novel Saint Ben. Join us, as often as you can, for a live reading of the novel on Zoom with discussion following, every day at 12 noon PDT. Each reading is tied to the day’s Catch. GO LIVE with us! Click here at 12 for our Noon Zoom!
“God’s got us in a big tube where He makes all the rules. Like one of those Christmas globes; you turn it upside down and make it snow on the little Christmas tree inside. Well, God can turn our world upside down and make it snow whenever He wants to, and we don’t have anything to say about it. Yeah, I believe in God, but I don’t see what difference it makes. Whether you believe in Him or not, He’s still going to do what He’s going to do anyway.” – Ben Beamering p. 133
Ben Beamering, our unorthodox instrument of God from the novel, Saint Ben, makes this observation about God while he is playing with the new chemistry set he got for Christmas. In it, he traces, what is for many, one of the greatest barriers to faith in God that people face. It’s bound to come up in some form with unbelievers and believers alike. Why does God allow pain and suffering? Why doesn’t He step in and do something? What about the devastation in Florida going on right now? How can you look at a pile of rubble where your home once was and say God is love? How can you believe in God in the middle of that? If God is going to do what He’s going do regardless, what point is there in trusting Him?
These are all legitimate questions, and there are no easy answers. The only thing that makes belief in God credible is the fact that these questions appear in the Bible where we discover that faith can and must run alongside them. If questions like this are in the Bible, that means that God is not surprised or threatened by them.
We can always ask why — and we should — but that doesn’t mean we will get an acceptable answer, at least acceptable to us. What Ben is going to have to get to, and all of us along with him, is a place of deep humility, where God indeed has the right to do whatever He wants to do, and Ben doesn’t have the right to know why.
The clearest example of this is in the book of Job. I once counted 78 questions in this book asked by Job and his self-appointed “counselors.” And when God finally speaks at the end of the book, does He answer those questions? No. He asks 240 more questions, none of which Job can answer, leaving him completely helpless and humbled to the core of his being. So much so that he repents from even thinking that he could somehow figure God out.
So Ben is going to have to ultimately come to the conclusion that, yes, God can do anything He wants without justifying Himself to us, and we need to humbly accept that simply because He is God and we are not. However, I do believe there is profound wisdom in the truth found in a simple gospel song, “And we’ll understand it better by and by.”
By the end of the book, Ben gets it. We have to get it, along the way, by faith.
The Catch is like a cool breeze on a triple-digit day. Wayne B
Our Campaign is actually an Anniversary
Recognizing that congregations all over the world were going to outgrow current facilities, on September 14, 2012, the Catch Ministry founders “purchased” acreage in cyberspace for its cyber church to GO LIVE together to glorify Him.
GO LIVE with us as we celebrate 10 years of putting thousands of real boots on the ground in 143 countries to introduce the Gospel of Welcome — Grace Turned Outward — to everyone, everywhere.
Celebrate our influence worldwide by contributing to our Annual Campaign and its $20,000 goal — the first campaign since before the pandemic.
GO LIVE by making a contribution today!
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John Fischer The Catch 