Sanctifying God’s Name...

Surrender of Kiddush HaShem

Some people who profess faith in God become disillusioned when they experience hardship and trials in their lives. They get offended because they had assumed that faith in God ought to be the ticket to the “good life,” that is, a life of blessing and ongoing prosperity (“your best life now!”). When unexpected misfortune or tragedy comes, however, their faith in God is shaken and sometimes becomes broken altogether...

This indicates that their faith in God is regarded as a means to the end of personal fulfillment and happiness, and therefore that God is “accepted” so long as things go well for them. The focus, of course, is not so much on God as it is on the self, as God is instrumentally regarded as the gift-giver or "servant" of the soul to be made happy...

An idolatrous conception of God is rooted in self-deception... The Lord does not exist for our sake, but on the contrary, we exist for His. Genuine faith is always tested in the "school of suffering," and our education for eternity is the divine curriculum.

Yes, there are sunny days of comfort and beauty along the way of faith, but there are also days of adversity, trouble, disappointment, and grief. Where is God then, in harrowing moments of anguish and desolation? “God did not spare my dying child.. he did not heed my prayers... How can I trust him now?” “Where was God when I was bereft of my innocence, brought low and forsaken? Where was he when I needed him most?” “How long, O LORD, will you forget me, forever? How long will you hide your face from me?”

Such experiences, as painful as they are, nevertheless are part of the plan of God, his “Torah of adversity” that strips away all our illusory hopes, desires, and dreams so that we might know Him as our only true hope. Our various “idols” of the heart and mind must be demolished; our faulty assumptions exposed, and our world turned upside-down. Our hearts must be first made barren and lost, so that we can come to know God in the truth....

“The LORD has given; and the LORD has taken away: may the Name of the LORD be blessed” (Job 1:21). This is the first great lesson of a mature faith: to bow before the LORD God as the Sovereign Power over all and to accept his decrees. We cannot cajole the LORD to do our will; we can offer him no counsel; we cannot manipulate him through flattery, tears, or defiance... Religious rituals do not propitiate his will. God is the all-powerful one before whom we can do nothing but yield ourselves in trust.

We are not the center of things; God is not our servant to make us happy; we owe our existence to Him alone. All we can offer him is our need. The first lesson, then, can be understood as the truth that there is indeed a God, and you are not Him.... Understanding these truths opens your eyes to the reality of the LORD, to His great Majesty and Glory, in which everything about you -- your beginning, your middle, and your end, yea, every moment of your life -- is under his sovereign power and overarching providence. And when you internalize these truths, when you esteem them ardently within your heart, you then can pray to the Living God who is over All, the LORD of Glory who upholds and sustains all things by the word of His power.

The way of faith is not easy, even if our hearts are aflame with the truth of God's overmastering brilliance, power, and grace. There remains the ongoing struggle to accept God's will and to trust in Him despite the darkness of our finitude, brokenness, and powerlessness. Asking why the LORD God does he does leads away from childish ideas of “karma” unto the mystery of suffering, to the cross of Messiah, to the sacrifice of love.

At first we may try to justify suffering for the sake of an inscrutably greater good, but ultimately such reasoning is insufficient and we are rendered silent. If we persevere, we begin to hear the Voice of God from the midst of the whirlwind, as God reveals his glory as the sacred center of Reality before whom all things mysteriously revolve.

We are consigned to live under the "dark cloud of unknowing" because God's plans and purposes exceed all our finite comprehension. We are given precious promises, but we see “through a glass darkly” until our redemption is made complete. We do not need -- nor can we supply -- rationalizations for what God does in his universe, though the life of faith believes that his mercy and love somehow pervades everything.

Meanwhile we will suffer in this world; we will be afraid; we will hurt; we will die, and things will often not make sense to us. But our faith is expressed in holy courage that is willing to accept all things - both the good and the bad -- as part of God's plan. We are given the cup to drink, just as Yeshua was given, and we can surrender to God's will in baptism despite the sorrows and sufferings we may experience along the way. Remaining faithful to the LORD in the midst of the ambiguities of life is a kiddush Hashem, that is, a life that sanctifies God's Name.

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Job 1:21b Hebrew

יְהוָה נָתַן
וַיהוָה לָקָח
יְהִי שֵׁם יְהוָה מְבֹרָךְ

"The LORD has given,
and the LORD has taken away;
may the Name of the LORD be blessed."

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Job 1:21b Hebrew page (pdf)

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