Before I jump into why I think drugs, even ones prescribed by doctors, can become idols, I want to give some general thoughts I have on mental illness.

I have a thought about this issue for a long time. My father, I’m told by mental health professionals, was manic depressive. My brother is diagnosed as schizophrenic/manic depressive. My mother suffered from panic attacks. I had panic attacks for years. I have other brothers and sisters who use various means to medicate themselves and cope with stress. So I have considered mental illness, and I have watched different loved ones battle mental illness with a wide array of weapons.

And here are some things I have come to believe from observing people with mental illness and from reading the Bible:

• Mental illness is not sinful, but some of our treatments of it are sinful, and in mental illness there is a built-in temptation for us to handle our pain in sinful ways.




• I believe that worry, depression, and anxiety are not sinful in their first appearance because I believe that when Jesus said his soul was in agony unto death and when he sweat blood, he was in great distress. What kind of anguish was he feeling and what kind of raw terror was trying to grip him? It was obviously worse than any of us will ever feel. To be holy and to be faced with becoming sin and losing communion with the Father is beyond anything I can comprehend. But even though our sufferings are mild comparatively, I don’t believe that when we feel great anguish we are showing a lack of faith. I don’t believe that a strong desire to step out from under the pain God puts on us is sinful. If we follow Christ and go to God in prayer, asking him to remove the cup, but preferring God’s will to our own, I don’t think anyone can accuse us of sin.




• I believe that doctors don’t really know if depression is caused by a chemical imbalance, or if it causes a chemical imbalance. The chicken or the egg? I really wonder how they know there is a chemical imbalance at all. How do they weigh the chemicals in the brain? My brother has been on drugs for 38 years now, and the dosages of his drugs are varied, depending on how he feels and how prevalent his symptoms are, not according to any tests on his brain chemicals. Three doctors prescribed strong drugs for me without doing any tests on my brain. One of them took blood and tested my bladder. One did blood tests only. The other did no tests at all. All the tests that were done came back completely normal and yet the doctors wanted me to take drugs. None tested my brain chemistry.




• I believe that exercise, petting cats, having friends tell us they love us, good music, a good diet, a good night’s sleep, a compliment from a stranger, a smile from someone you’ve helped, sex, porn, funny movies, church, prayer, reading the Bible, preaching to your soul and telling it not to be downcast, praising God, good sermons, watching the sun set over the ocean, shopping for a new toy, money in the bank, a nice car, a good book on a rainy day, candlelight, certain scents, a glass of wine, and any number of other things…have the power to change our mood for the better. Some of these things can contribute to our long-term well-being. Others of them, because they are unlawful, make people feel better short-term, but then they contribute to a long-term depression (because sinning in an attempt to feel good for a while always causes the depression to worsen).




• I believe most doctors and most of our friends, because they live in a hedonistic society, have an anti-biblical slant. Doctors will often prescribe drug therapy, talk therapy, or exercise. None of these may be wrong, but why go to them first? And we hear from people in the church, things like, “You have to learn to say, ‘No.’” Or, “If you don’t take care of yourself you can’t take care of anyone else. You have to make sure your needs are met, so you will have strength to meet the needs of others.” But the Bible says he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed and we should put the interests of others ahead of our own interests. The Bible tells us one thing and society tells us the opposite thing.  (People who tell us to take care of ourselves first don’t usually mean we should make sure we take time to pray and read our Bibles before we set about our days. They usually mean we should take time for a pedicure or a bubble bath, I think.)




• I believe that there are some serious downsides to taking drugs for mental illness. Some of the drugs cause people to be lethargic, to lose their sex drives, to lose their ambition, and to lose their joy. They alter personality. And they are hard on the liver. You can’t put toxins into your body long-term and not pay a price. Long-term usage can utterly destroy a person’s ability to function normally in society. Besides the physical side-effects, if the drugs make a person numb to pain, they may be making him numb to what God wants to do in his life. So before we take drugs, I think we should try a bunch of other things first. We could get a puppy. Or take a walk on the beach every day. We might try getting eight hours of sleep and giving up the coffee. We can jog or swim or ride our bikes an hour a day. We might look for a new friend or take up a new hobby. But even better than all of those, I believe, is to look in scripture and see what God prescribes for depression, worry, and anxiety.

I’ll look at that next time.

Someone wrote to tell me that my post on Knowing God made me sound…um…a little less than compassionate. And like I am giving a simple solution to a complex problem.

I’m sorry for being less than compassionate. The truth is that I am incredibly self-centered and not nearly as compassionate as I should be. It’s an ongoing sin problem I have. I really think about myself more than I think about anyone else. I put my own interests above the interests of others. I am far from having the mind of Christ.

And I’m not making light of that. It’s a terrible failing and I’m very sorry for it.

I’m not sorry that I’m giving a simplistic solution here, though. I do see God’s word as being very easy to understand in regards to stress and how we should deal with it. And I see very clearly in the Bible that if we wait on God in suffering instead of trying to solve it ourselves, we will grow to know him better. I can’t take that back right now. You’re welcome to write and correct me, if I’m wrong.

But I’d like to make one thing clear: I am not a doctor or a theologian. I’m simply a woman spouting off on a blog with things that God has taught me through his Word and the way that word has come to bear in my experience. If I ever say something that doesn’t apply to you, please feel free to ignore me. Treat my words like that curse in Proverbs: if it’s undeserved it finds no place to land.

OK, I know that sometimes people injure us with words even when we aren’t guilty of the sins they accuse us of. Jesus was sinless and he was injured when people taunted him and accused him of evil. I get that. And if anyone reading this blog was injured by my words, please forgive me. If you are not sinfully taking drugs or drugging your child, then my post wasn’t directed at you. It was never meant to land on you. It was never meant as a judgment on you.

I have quite a few acquaintances and friends who are now, or have been in the past, on anti-depressants. And I have never once, when they’ve told me they were on drugs, thought, “Well, she’s sinning.” Nor have I ever once prayed to God, asking him to stop a friend from sinning and using anti-depressants. It’s absolutely none of my business if you are on anti-depressants. I’m not your husband and I’m not your doctor and I’m not your pastor. I am, as your sister in Christ, called to gently restore you if I see you in sin. But taking anti-depressants is not sinful in and of itself. It might be sinful. But how would I know if it was sinful for you?

Why would I even consider whether you are sinning or not when you use anti-depressants? Why would that be my business? If I know you are sinning, then I’ll tell you that you are sinning. If I don’t see sin in your life, then I’m not staying up nights trying to figure out whether your drug use is sinful or not. I’m just not that interested in what you are doing. What you decide about drug use is between you and your husband and God. Unless I knew the history of your depression and knew how much you had prayed and knew what your therapist had told you and knew what the Holy Spirit had convicted you of, I couldn’t possibly make a determination regarding your personal situation. If you are on drugs and I’ve never said I think you’re sinning by using drugs, then you can believe that I don’t have an opinion on your drug use. It doesn’t even enter my mind to think you’re sinning.

The same goes for my many, many friends who have put their children on drugs for behavioral issues or for depression. I simply have never once thought, “Well, isn’t she sinful and lazy for drugging her child,” about any of my friends when they’ve told me they have decided to go with the drug therapy. I just can’t know whether you’re sinning or not and so I assume that you aren’t. Believe me, I have enough trouble trying to ferret out and fight my own sins. I don’t have time to try to discover yours.

Why then did I say if you want to know God you should get off the drugs? It’s not that drugs are always sinful or that shopping or TV or plastic surgery or money in the bank all are sinful things. It’s that these things often are the idols we look to for security and comfort, instead of waiting upon the Lord.

More on this next time.

I have just listened to four really wonderful sermons—well three sermons and message on the life of David Brainerd, I guess. All four messages were given at a men’s retreat. Hmmm. I’m not usually looking for men’s retreat messages. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard any before. I stumbled upon these because I was looking at books in the Westminster bookstore, and I came across a book called, Rescuing Ambition, by Dave Harvey.

Now I am about the most unambitious person around. Really. I have not a competitive bone in my body. I’m the only person I know who would rather lose a game than win. I don’t mind winning, but when I am playing with people who really want to win, I really want them to win, too. It’s important to them, after all, and I don’t care about it in the least.

So my first reaction to the title Rescuing Ambition was to run the other way. That, of course, made me stop and consider. If I don’t like a thing, it sometimes mean I need to study it.

I thought a little about ambition, then. Ambition is not really the flip side of contentment. It’s the flip side of complacency. Having ambition is not the same as having a competitive spirit. Having ambition is not the same as having selfish ambition. Ambition for furthering God’s purposes is not the same thing as ambition to get ahead in life.

I’ve been thinking about the difference between contentment and complacency for a few years. I even wrote a novel where I tried to contrast the two. Contentment comes from knowing that you are God’s own dearly loved child. Contentment in all circumstances comes from knowing that everything you walk through is God’s gift to you for your good and his glory. (Whether you want to say he allows the trials and successes or ordains them, doesn’t matter for this argument—everything he allows, he allows because he loves you. When you know this, you can be content.) Contentment is not meant to do away with ambition, though. We should plan and strive and work. We should have big plans for serving our neighbors. We serve a big God and we should have a big vision. Contentment is not grounds for complacency.

So, I, being one to lean toward complacency, thought maybe I should buy this book on ambition. I haven’t gotten it yet—it should arrive tomorrow. In the meantime, though, I discovered four messages by the author of book. He’s a very good speaker, entertaining, passionate, logical, biblical, witty, and uses himself for negative illustrations. I just loved his messages.

They were well worth the time. Check them out:

• Don’t Waste Your Ambition
• The Perfect Man
• The Quest for Contentment
• Brainerd and the Better Plan

So how do we know God? Do we just read the Bible and know about God, or is possible to know God the way we know people we can see and touch?

The person I’ve known best is my husband. But just because I experienced my husband in the flesh, doesn’t mean I knew him better than I know the God I’ve never seen.

On the one hand I know God the same way I knew my husband. When I did something…say I picked up my husband’s plate after one of his favorite dinners. I knew that he would say, “Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm that was a good dinner, Babe.” And I knew if the meat was dry my husband would say, “A little dry, Babe.” I can hear his voice now, as I remember this. And even when some strange thing happened, I knew how my husband would react. When the doctor told him that he had between three month to less than a year to live, I was not surprised to hear him tell his brother later that night, “The doctor told me I have a year to live.” That was exactly what my husband would say.

But I know exactly how God is going to react to things I do, too. I know when I sin and go to him and say, “I’m sorry I sinned again. Will you forgive me again?” that he’s going to kill the fatted calf and throw a party for me. I know that my relationship with him is going to be restored and I will be flooded with joy and acceptance and love. I know when I sit at the bedside of a dying loved one that God is going to fill me with comfort and peace and a feeling of well-being. I know that when I am on the verge of death, God is going to fill me with joy. I have experienced these things in the past so I expect him to do these things in the future.

Sure, one day my husband might have surprised me and decided he liked dry meat, and one day God may surprise me and withhold comfort in trial, but both of those things are unlikely and it still remains true that I know God, at least as well as I knew my husband.

I really know God way better than I ever knew my husband, though. I could never delve into the depths of my husband’s heart. I knew much of his heart, but there was a lot I never knew. And there were places in my heart that my husband never knew about. But God has revealed himself to us in scripture. He tells us who he is and who we are and how we are to relate to him. He tells me how he feels about me. He tells me what to expect from him. He tells me what he loves and what he hates, and what his goals are. He tells me where he’s taking me and how we’re gong to arrive there.

My husband’s heart was subject to change. He didn’t have an agenda that he could lay out for me on the day we were married that would carry me through our twenty years together. But God is not changing. He has shown me who he is and where we’re going.

I guess reading the Bible can give us facts *about* God and no intimate relationship. But when you look intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, not forgetting what it says, but doing it, you are not only successful in all you do, you also get to know the God who is giving you the success. When you walk with him—when you walk in obedience—you get to know him. If you go where he is, you get to know him.

Where he is, often times, is in the painful places we try to avoid. We don’t allow ourselves to go through the hard times. When we have pain we take pain pills. When we begin to struggle in our marriages, we give in to divorce or we withdraw emotionally and stick it out but never really address the problems. And we pop pills—oh my, how many Christian adults are on anti-depressants, I wonder? And how many Christian kids are on drugs to modify their bad behavior? Why are we on these drugs? Often it’s because we don’t want pain. Dealing with unhappiness and unfulfilled lives is painful. Disciplining children is hard and painful work.

If we numb ourselves to the pain, how can we know God? If we flee from the storms, how will we know God? How can we know the Deliverer if we constantly provide our own deliverance instead of waiting on him?

We need the trials to know ourselves–in trials we learn that we are unable to save ourselves, we reach our wits’ end, and we learn that we can put no hope in our own strength. We need trials to know God–he is stronger than any power that comes against us, he is completely committed to protecting us and perfecting us, he is able to still any storm and carry us to safety.

If you want to know God, pray every day (seven times a day, or morning, noon, and evening—pray without ceasing, IOW), asking the Holy Spirit to fill you and teach you. And read the Bible every day (every morning and every evening if you can, is even better). And quit running from sin and sorrow and pain. Admit your sin and face up to the consequences, stay and work on the painful relationship that is full of conflict, stay off the mind-altering drugs and the acid-reducing pills and wait for God to heal your depression and your stress-related illnesses.

I fail at every one of these things often. So I thank God for reminding me daily of one more thing: If you would know God, go to him for mercy and forgiveness each day. He is best known at the cross, where his heart of love is revealed to us.

Present your requests to God with prayer and petition with thanksgiving. (Phil. 4:6)

In everything give thanks. (1 Thes. 5:18)

Rejoice always. Again, I say, rejoice. (Phil. 4:4, 1 Thes. 5:16)

Is it possible to obey these commands? In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus. God wants us to give thanks in everything. Not necessarily FOR everything, but IN everything. Rejoice always. Stand firm in the Lord, Philippians 4:4 goes on to say. And then present your petitions to God. Go ahead and tell him that the circumstances are hard and ask him to change them. But rejoice in those circumstances. Rejoice in what God is doing in all of your circumstances.

That is not only possible but it is what Christians delight to do. Why? Because when darkness is all around, God shines bright.

In the tough times we see God for the hero he is. We feel his comfort and bask in his love. It’s like snuggling up inside on a stormy day. We are safe and warm in Christ.

When you obey these commands to rejoice always, some people will think you are odd. They’ll accuse you of having no emotions—of being stoical, cold, unloving. But mostly, I think, they’ll simply  believe you’re lying. They’ll think you really are angry at God, and hurt, but you won’t admit it. They’ll think you’re phony and pretending to be holy.

If we believe that God is all loving and all powerful (Psalm 62:11,12), then it’s natural for us to rejoice always. If God loves us and if he is able to do anything, what reason can we have for not rejoicing?

We may weep when we’re hurt. Sin is painful. The evils in this world are so awful and hurtful. You can’t watch the news without mourning for fallen humanity. And correction is not pleasant as we suffer through it, even if it does later produce the peaceable fruit of righteousness. So I am not saying that Christians love pain. What I’m saying is that in the midst of pain it is always possible to give thanks from your heart.

God loves you. He will never, ever punish you for your sins. Can you grasp that? When you suffer it is not because God is punishing you for your sins. He is not angry at you for sinning. Ever.

He will never direct one iota of anger toward you. If you are covered by the blood of Christ, then God threw all the wrath you deserve at Jesus on the cross. There is no more wrath in God for you. All he has for you is tender love. Do you believe that?

Sometimes he corrects us, but he is never angry at us. He corrects us because he loves us and he wants us to live in peaceful and happy communion with him. So he corrects us and drives our sin from us. But he is never angry about our sin. He’s already spent his anger at the cross. All he has left for us is love. It is never his desire to hurt us. His heart toward us is one of love beyond any love we can understand.

Sometimes I think God looks at us with disappointment. We can grieve the Holy Spirit. But his grief is not because he’s offended by our actions but because he is sorry for us. He’s disappointed FOR us, not AT us. He’s no longer offended by us. We are his beloved children in whom he delights.

If we want to live with joy in Christ we have to grasp this. Whereas before we are saved we can do nothing to please God and he is constantly offended by our sin, when we are covered in Christ’s blood, we can do nothing to move away from God’s love and he is never offended by us.

Never.

No condemnation. Ever.

God is for us. Always.

Nothing can remove us from God’s love. Nothing. Not our sin. Nothing.

How can we not rejoice if we have grasped the good news that is ours in Christ? How can we not be always thankful if we understand how much God loves us?

In the comments yesterday, Becky brought up an interesting point. Taking up the cross means we have to intentionally deny ourselves:

I just assumed the daily sufferings, which I believe encompass things like Paul’s thorn in the flesh or Job’s multiplied losses, are different from the intentional denial of self that I believe taking up my cross entails.

This is a very good observation.

Maybe I need to refine my beliefs and clarify my expression of them.

Becky is right that the cold and the cancer and the flat tires in our lives don’t count as times we have intentionally denied ourselves.

When Jesus tells us to take up our cross and follow him, he is telling us that no man can find his life unless he loses it. He is telling us to count the cost of discipleship. There’s an initial taking up of the cross. And then there is the daily taking up of the cross. We are to crucify the flesh and to count ourselves dead to sin. Daily. We are to deny ourselves. Daily. We are to offer up our bodies as living sacrifices. Daily.

I still think that when we deny ourselves in trials we are bearing the cross. When we respond well to trials we haven’t chosen—trials put on us by God or man—we are taking up the cross and following Christ.

Crosses are not just hard things we decide to do. Jesus said that no man took his life—he laid it down of his own accord—but we are also told that it pleased the Father to bruise him. The Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all. The cross was put on Jesus by his own free will (John 10:18), by God the Father (Isaiah 53:10), and by sinful men (Acts 2:23).

Our crosses are also laid on us by God the Father and by sinful men.

When those crosses are laid on us we can bow under them of our free will or we can refuse to carry them.

When we are reviled by men we can forgive—if we do, we are bearing our cross and following after Jesus. If we forgive we are crucifying our flesh, denying ourselves, and counting ourselves dead to sin. When the economy takes a turn and we lose everything, we can praise God, knowing that our hope is in Christ not in money. When we do that, we are putting to death our desire for wealth. When we find out we have cancer and we praise God, we are putting to death our desire to be filled with self-pity and anger at God. We are going quietly to the cross.

I think to take up the cross means to put to death the flesh with its desire to be first, to be served, to be pampered, to be entertained, to be loved. It means to deny our earthly desires in favor of doing eternal good. It means to do God’s will instead of our own will. To deny ourselves in favor of obeying God. If that’s true, then every time we respond well to a trial we are bearing the cross. When Job lost all his children and all his servants and all his wealth and said, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord,” he was bearing the cross. He was not a robot. He had just lost all of the children that were so precious to him. We know he loved them—he sacrificed for them all the time. So he loses them all and instead of ranting and raving and screaming at the God who would allow so much pain to be heaped on him, he worshiped God. He refused to indulge the flesh. He took up the cross.

Yes, we can carry the cross in good times, too—not only in times of trial. When I gossip about someone I am not putting to death the flesh and I am not carrying my cross. I am, instead, indulging the flesh. Refusing to engage in gossip is a taking up of the cross. Spending time with God daily is a cross we must bear sometimes, because often our flesh wants to ignore God. Praying for others is bearing a cross, as is preaching Christ in a hostile world.

But we also bear the cross when we sing praise to God and smile and encourage others from our wheelchairs instead of giving in to self-pity. Because praising God and loving our neighbors when we are in pain is contrary to our sinful nature.

I’ve been listening to an audio book by Francis Chan, Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit. (Get it free this month by clicking here.) I went into it a little warily because I think the Holy Spirit wants me to love and obey Jesus. I think if I love and obey Christ then I am not neglecting the Holy Spirit at all. Rather I am listening to him and obeying him. I don’t think the Holy Spirit wants me to spend a lot of time pursuing him. I do pray, often, that my life will be full of the Holy Spirit and that his presence in my life will be seen by the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, perseverance, and self-control. I pray for an increase in this fruit in my life.

And I agree with Chan’s belief that the church has tragically neglected the Holy Spirit. But that tragic neglect is not more prevalent in, say, Reformed circles than in Charismatic circles. You can say you’re serving the Spirit when you are really just seeking a thrill ride. We can see that the church is neglecting the Holy Spirit not because the people don’t dance in worship, but because the people of the church are self-centered and ignorant of scripture and sinful.

So I went into the book carefully, hoping Chan wasn’t going to tell us all we needed to play tambourines or bark in worship. But I also went in wanting to learn more about the Holy Spirit. I want to be filled with the Holy Spirit. I want to have a better a relationship with God the Spirit. I want to hear him well and obey him quickly.

I’m happy to report that Chan wants us to love and obey Christ. He does think that the Spirit tells us to follow Christ. He wants us to crucify our flesh and to obey God. Very good stuff.

One thing I heard last night, though, reminded me of a way I see suffering differently than some, I think. I’m not going to go searching for an exact quote, but he said something about how we can’t say we’re following Christ in suffering because we lost our job, or have some illness. Sharing in Christ’s suffering is not about running out of gas, or being unable to sell our home, or…having pain from surgery on your jaw, I suppose (I had surgery yesterday and, yowsers, it hurts!). Those things are not taking up the cross, I think Chan was saying, because those are sufferings that all people have. Unsaved people suffer with cancer just as saved people do. When the Holy Spirit calls us to suffer for and with Christ he is asking us to lay down our lives for the gospel. He wants us to be willing to be stoned or burned at the stake for the sake of identifying with Christ and furthering his cause. We need to be willing to be insulted and persecuted if we want to share in Christ’s suffering.

I get what he’s saying and love Chan for encouraging us to give up everything for the sake of following Christ. But I’m not convinced he’s completely right about the daily troubles in life not being crosses for us to bear.

I believe that even though we all suffer, Christians suffer differently than unbelievers, and Christians are blessed when they suffer well. It doesn’t matter if my suffering is that I can’t sell my house or that my boss fires me because I won’t renounce Christ. All suffering is sharing in Christ’s suffering if we suffer well.

Jesus suffered by giving up heaven and his grasp on equality with God and taking on the form of a servant. As he walked on earth, he obeyed his Father. He didn’t respond in anger to irritations, he didn’t kick the cat in frustration. So every time I’m irritated by life and I refrain from kicking the cat, I’m following Jesus and sharing in his suffering, I think. The truth is that as God’s child I shouldn’t have to suffer any irritation. Life should be perfect. God created us to live in a very good world. And we long for that. We should long for that. We should groan, with creation, for redemption. We weren’t made for suffering. Trials are not part of the “very good” God created. Trials are not good.

When we recognize that all trials are evil and when we then bow in obedience to God in the midst of trials and even rejoice in trials, believing God is using them for our good and his glory, then we are following Christ.

When the house doesn’t sell and I praise God, I’m following Christ. When we get cancer and we rejoice in God’s will, we are sharing in Christ’s suffering. Jesus never got angry at his Father. He never yelled at God. He never shook his fist at God. We need to approach common trials as Christ approached the cross, I think. As holy callings.

I believe that in every place of suffering we can obey God or disobey. We can praise him or curse him. We can bask in his comfort and love him more, seeing how faithful he is, or we can seek to end our suffering by filling our lives with something other than God. We can fill our days with TV or drugs or novels or shopping or the Internet. Or when we suffer the things common to man we can show our families and our neighbors how to suffer as Christ did by suffering as he did on the cross. By saying, “Into your hands I commit my spirit.” By allowing God to be God and agreeing that he’s doing right even when we feel forsaken.

Chan says that not being able to sell your house is no cross because he wants us to understand that crucifying the flesh is really strong language and crucifying is painful, not superficial. I agree with him. I just think that we need to be careful to not belittle our daily trials and we need to see how important they are to our growth and our relationship with God.

I think every burden, every disappointment, every sorrow is a cross. God created us for pure, joyful communion with him and every sorrow is both a punishment for sin (original or ongoing sin) and a temptation to doubt God’s love and goodness. Every sorrow is a cross that we can bear well or that we can mutter about. At every cross we face that crossroad—we must decide whether we will love God in the midst of our suffering and trust that he is doing right or whether we will doubt his love and power and seek a way to relieve our suffering on our own.

Every day that answer to prayer is delayed is time for us to be tempted to lie with Hagar or to dress up like our brother and try to manipulate God or trick him into giving us the blessing we think he’s withholding. Every day the house doesn’t sell we must choose to wait patiently on the Lord or to complain against him or to help him out and end our suffering by some means he has not appointed.

I don’t think we should despise our small sufferings. When we learn to obey in small sufferings that equips us to obey in big sufferings. All obedience and praise to God in the midst of any suffering is sweet to God.

I don’t want to compare my crosses to others’. I don’t want to compare my blessings to others’. I want to just walk each day on the path God sets before me, praising him for the things that are fun for me and also for the things that are hard for me.

Does anyone else have a love/hate relationship with Ligonier because of their five dollar Friday deal?

I’m kidding. It’s pure love for me. I can’t get over all the great deals. I’m being selfish and buying only things I want to go over with the kids, but if I had a little more money, I’d be doing a bunch of Christmas shopping every Friday.

They give you an advance look at what’s being offered on Thursday and you can buy from 8:00 a.m. Friday to 8:00 a.m. Saturday.

Check out what they have this week.

Here’s one of several offerings: Recovering the Beauty of the Arts

When I look at the pictures of the oil on the water it looks red. What would an ocean look like if a third of it had turned to blood, I wonder.

And will a third of the fish die from this oil spewing into the sea?

I don’t know. But as I listen to the news all day, every day (my mother needs noise to be happy, and for some reason sermons and music just don’t do it for her—news is her thing) I am amazed at the blame game going on.

We hear people from Louisianna so angry at the president for not fixing this problem as if Obama has some kind expertise in oil spills—as if he CAN fix it and he’s simply refusing to.

And, of course people are mad at BP and we have Secretary Salazar assuring us that the US government has its “boot on the throat of BP to ensure that they’re doing all that is necessary…” as if BP is just being lazy, so we need to threaten them and make them work.

And I’m thinking when the end of the world does come, it could well start with something like this. Maybe God will just open the heavens and pour blood down from the clouds and fill the oceans. But I suspect at least some of the disasters will be man-made.

Either way we should be repenting and praying rather than blaming. They haven’t even capped the thing yet and they are already having senate hearings. Why not wait until the crisis is over to start blaming and defending?

But, no, because people who live without God have to find an answer for everything. They have to believe that someone is to blame and someone can be held accountable because if they can fix blame then they think these kinds of things can be eradicated in the future.

And besides all that, we like to give vent to our frustration and anger.

We are a world full of entitled people. We are entitled to health and wealth and happiness. We are entitled to good, reasonably priced medical care. We are entitled to have sex with whomever, whenever. We are entitled to have it our way at Burger King.

Who says?

The fish and the birds are entitled to clean water. They are going to suffer in this mess we’ve made. But why are we so mad? We who drive the cars.

And why, of all things, are we yelling at the president demanding that he fix something he can’t fix instead of kneeling before our God and asking him to fix something he can fix very easily?