My church has a worship planning group that meets every Monday evening to review the previous day's worship service and work on the next Sunday's service.  This week, I shared with the group questions the congregation had submitted to me to use for my summer sermons.  The "Ask Jack" series has become a tradition for us each summer.  The questions have proven to be such an important of the growth of this congregation, that I have gathered responses from previous years into a book:  Finding Faith:  a Pastor Responds to Twenty Critical Questions of Faith.  It is coming out later this summer.   The lineup of this summer's "Ask Jack" is included below.  There's still room for more if you would like to e-mail one to me.

The usual order of worship planning business was overshadowed by the recent Air France tragedy.  It gave particular impetus to the question about why bad things happen to people who don't deserve them.  Almost thirty years ago, Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a bestselling book with that very title Why Bad Things Happen to Good People

Then one of the group members said, "It's just tumbling."  As he explained, we began to grasp the image.  When rocks tumble down the mountain side, sharp edges break off.  Sometimes the rocks become smoother and sometimes they break open.  We are all rocks and the tumbling holds the potential to reveal the hidden jewel within - the jewel prepared for partnership with the Eternal.

The image of tumbling is not intended to be a simplistic or all-encompassing answer to the problem of pain and suffering.  But it is a reminder of the possibility that lies in that suffering for each of us.  The hope of faith and the promise of the Bible is that we all live in the reality we call God.  If we tumble or crash or stay safely perched, we are in God.

The answers to why tragedies like plane crashes happen are seldom simple.  Often answers are just not available.  Tragedies remind us that life is hard - not all the time, but enough.  Sometimes life is more than hard enough.  Our responses to suffering often go right to the heart of our image of God and of God's universe.

Thanks for continuing to bless me as we journey together.

Jack Price

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