{"id":692,"date":"2008-11-18T08:16:36","date_gmt":"2008-11-18T15:16:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=692"},"modified":"2008-11-18T08:16:36","modified_gmt":"2008-11-18T15:16:36","slug":"god-showed-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2008\/11\/18\/god-showed-up\/","title":{"rendered":"God Showed Up?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a preview for Rob Bell’s latest Nooma<\/a>, “Open.”\u00a0 I watched this on Monday and really enjoyed it.\u00a0 In this clip, Rob voices something that has been bugging me for a while:\u00a0 why do we so often use the phrase “God showed up”?\u00a0 It seems like one of those hip Christianese things we like to say:\u00a0 “man, we’ve been praying about this mission trip, and God really showed up<\/em> in a big way.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

I feel like a grouchy old man when I hear this.\u00a0 My gut churns a bit, and I think, “what do you mean God showed up<\/em>?\u00a0 Isn’t God everywhere?\u00a0 Doesn’t He know everything?\u00a0 Is He like Baal or Zeus, off doing his own thing, until our supplications make him finally pay attention and sort of reluctantly do some magic?\u00a0 Are we surprised — like whoa, God, I didn’t think you got the invitation, but you showed up, <\/em>dude!?”<\/p>\n

Ok, I am a grouchy old man.\u00a0 But I do think there’s something subtle here that is good to correct.\u00a0 I feel like we lose something of God’s majesty, wisdom, and mystery when we say something like “God showed up.”\u00a0 I like to think that God is fully there even when it seems to me that He hasn’t shown up.\u00a0 When I pray for my son’s disability to be healed, and it isn’t; when I pray for justice in the world, and there doesn’t seem to be much of it; when I hear a story on the BBC world news about the global sex slave trade and how little can actually be done about it; when I study the Bible in depth\u00a0and find it to be unruly and untameable, often more of a challenge than a clear guide; when I look at the list of things I hope to accomplish in life and realize that, at age 42, I’ll never succeed in all of it; when I consider the precautions I have to take to avoid giving in to the disease of depression\u00a0— in all this and more, God doesn’t have to show up, he’s there, just as much as when He opens doors I thought were sealed shut or blesses me with health and success, as He often does.<\/p>\n

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This is a preview for Rob Bell’s latest Nooma, “Open.”\u00a0 I watched this on Monday and really enjoyed it.\u00a0 In this clip, Rob voices something that has been bugging me for a while:\u00a0 why do we so often use the phrase “God showed up”?\u00a0 It seems like one of those hip Christianese things we like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spirituality","category-theology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-ba","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}