Greetings Friends!
Hope you are getting along OK. I'm just horrified by the tragedy in Japan. It's even more devastating since I lived there for about seven years and my wife's hometown was Sendai. Luckily for the city itself, they had an earthquake in the late 70's that scared my wife badly. She was pretty young at the time and it seemed like everything was collapsing. Well, that's because it was! They had to rebuild a good portion of the city and they did it to withstand earthquakes such as this one. Still, the tsunami is a force of nature that even the engineering skill of Japan couldn't reckon with. Any and all prayers for Japan would be appreciated. If we feel powerless we can still pray hard and I believe it can make a difference although I do not for one second believe God "caused" the quake.
Anyway, I did visit the Annapolis Friends Meeting on Sunday. It was something like I've never experienced before. A couple of the folks greeted me and invited me to enter the sanctuary and have a seat. And there we sat, for about 50 minutes in complete silence! I will say the place smelled nice, a strong scent of wood like I was out in nature and so I got so relaxed in there I just about fell asleep! After about 50 minutes then, two ladies stood up and said what they felt led to say. I do feel welcome to come back there and may visit them again sometime. They are just down the road from the Unitarian Universalist Church, which I'm instinctively more cautious against but that will not keep me from visiting one of their services. I'll let you know what it was like! I'm sure I will meet some good people there, as I did at the Quaker service. That's where we need to start, meeting people, forming relationships and then getting the Christian Universalists among us together! That's what we are going to do, I have no doubt about this, although it will take time.
Next, I received a surprise email on Saturday from the wonderful man who runs the Tentmaker website, Gary Amirault! I had been communicating with him via email and he let me know he was in town for a few days. We had a nice chat at a Barnes and Noble (one of my favorite places for having church and/or fellowship right now!) and I felt privileged and even blessed to be able to speak with Gary since his website with all its information and articles that were so helpful to me when I was learning about universal salvation. One thing I particularly remember from our conversation is his desire to present the message as Christ Victorious! I think this is a great idea. If 90% (or even one person, really) is going to suffer forever with no hope of repentance and no hope that God will ever have mercy on them then how can the churches call that a victory? Of course, they have it dead wrong. Jesus is the Savior of the whole world, not just a select few who happen to be born in the right place and taught the right beliefs during this lifetime. That is the message, the truly Good News!
We needn't worry that God will not have mercy on so-called "lost" loved ones because we know that it is God's mercy (or "love" as the new translations of Psalm 136 have it) that lasts forever and not his anger. It is true that God's ways are higher than our ways, and you may have fundamentalists (by this I mean those who insist you believe just as they believe, literally and precisely, just as they do -- anywhere from around five to fifteen beliefs they insist are mandatory in order to escape being tortured forever by God) resort to stating this as a tactic while they stubbornly hold onto their belief that God is tormenting most of his creatures for infinity. If they can overcome religious pride enough to discuss it with us at all we need to remind them that in Isaiah 55 the prophet was speaking in the context of the mercy of God, not somehow justifying any kind of eternal torment. All will be saved (1 Timothy 4:10; 1 John 2:2), God will have mercy on ALL (Romans 11:32); God will win and restore all creation to him - no more sickness, no more tears, no more death. Now THAT is good news. We have a lot to look forward to!! Never give up! And please remember Japan in your prayers.
God bless,
David
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