Is God dead?
There’s a wonderful story told about Martin Luther (if I recall it correctly). It’s said that one morning he was looking particularly miserable and downcast. So much so, that his wife Katy said to him, “Martin, what’s the matter? Is God dead?” What a godly woman! And what a brilliant piece of pastoral counselling!
Just think how differently we tend to respond when faced with someone similarly overwhelmed and sad. I think we have a tendency either to minimise the problem (“It’s not that bad, really”) or to maximise our capability to deal with it (“You can do it, I know you can”). Katy doesn’t do either. Instead, she takes her beloved husband to God, as if to say, “Martin, is God dead? That’s the only thing that can possibly explain you looking so miserable. Since God isn’t dead, why are you so unhappy?”
Minimising the problem or maximising our capability to deal with it are both ways of relying on ourselves. Yet the apostle Paul explicitly says that he learned “not [to] rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:9). Now, that is a God you can rely on! Our problems may be genuinely insurmountable, and we are desperately weak, but we have a God who raises the dead! So, let’s learn with Katy to look away from our problems and ourselves to our God.