Someone has written that the Christian religion is a “storm in a golden frame.” It occurs to me that the figure ought to be reversed. The storm is not at the center. The storm develops around the edges where God and his will come into contact with human life. The cross is the stormy reminder of what happens when God invades human life.
When a weather front of clear, cold, refreshing air moves down from Canada and hits a mass of hot, humid, stagnant air, storms develop along the edge of the cold front, often with lightning, thunder and torrential rains. Even so does God’s invasion of our world develop storms as it advances into the human scene . And insofar as you and I become in some measure agents or ambassadors of God in the world, we can expect a stormy time of it. If it does not bring actual physical suffering, as was the lot of Christ and Paul and so many of our contemporaries in Communist lands, it will at the very least bring a tortured conscience and increased sensitivity to the injustices done to others. A Christian cannot ever stand by and be a mere spectator to human suffering and misery without becoming more than a spectator, without entering in some degree into the misery and suffering himself and doing whatever may be done at the moment to alleviate some of it.
Edmund A. Steimle (1907 – 1988) Are You Looking For God?
