Versetto introduttivo: Matteo 7:21 Meditazione a cura di: Olga Boero Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCQdTWvdgOg
Sabbath: The Shepherd’s Crucible
Sabbath Afternoon
Read for This Week’s Study: Psalm 23:1-6, Romans 12:18-21.
Memory Text: “He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake” (Psalm 23:3-4).
Sophie leaned back against her bedroom door and slid to the floor. Tears were welling up fast, and it was only a moment before she was sobbing. “How could he? How could he!” Sophie had just received news that was breaking her heart. Someone she thought was a friend, someone she respected and trusted, was spreading awful gossip about her in order to ruin her reputation and the work she had been doing. Grabbing her Bible off the bed, she suddenly found herself staring at some very familiar words: “He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me” (, Psalm 23:4, NKJV).
“Surely this can’t be!” she blurted out to herself. But the logic seemed inescapable. The Shepherd in the psalm was guiding His sheep in paths of righteousness, but these very paths also seemed to wind their way into the valley of the shadow of death. Could it be possible that even this painful betrayal by a friend, this dark valley, could be used by God to train her in righteousness?
The Week at a Glance: At what times have you grown more spiritually — through the easy times or the harder ones?
Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, July 2.
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Introduction: In the Crucible with Christ
The Crucified Creator
“All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3).
“All things” were made by Him, Jesus, and yet — according to Scripture — “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). The Creator wept? Even more so, Jesus was “despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). The Creator, a man of sorrows, despised and rejected? And He once cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).
How could these things be? It’s because Jesus, our Creator, was also our Redeemer, and as such He was the Crucified God — the Creator who took on humanity and in that humanity suffered through a life of privation and toil that ended with Him hung on a Roman cross.
Thus, our Creator, the one in whom “we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28), suffered in humanity in ways that none of us ever could. We can experience only our own griefs, our own sorrows; at the cross He bore “our griefs, and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4) — all of them. It’s the most amazing act in all cosmic history.
With that background (that of the crucified God looming over us), we will for the next few months seek to better comprehend the incomprehensible — our own suffering, the sufferings of Christians, of those who have committed their lives to Christ. We make no claims to have all the answers or even many; we’re claiming only that “God is love” (1 John 4:8) and that although these things happen, we can trust God despite them and, indeed, grow in grace through them, no matter how painful the process.
This quarter we will study the Word of God and see how other flesh and blood, though radiated in faith, nevertheless faced despair, betrayal, disappointment, loss, injustice, and abuse (sound like anything you can relate to?). How did they cope? What did they learn? What can their examples teach us?
As we look at these people, their experiences, their struggles, and their trials of faith (which might be much like our own), we must always see them contrasted against the background of the Cross. We must always remember that no matter what anyone faces, Jesus Christ, our Creator and Redeemer, went through worse.
Our God is a suffering God. Even Albert Camus, hardly a Christian, understood some of the implications of the Cross and the sufferings of God there: “The night on Golgotha is so important in the history of man only because, in its shadow, the divinity abandoned its traditional privileges and drank to the last drop, despair included, the agony of death.” — Albert Camus, The Rebel (New York: Vintage International, 1991), p. 33. Or, as Ellen G. White expressed it: “The cross is a revelation to our dull senses of the pain that, from its very inception, sin has brought to the heart of God.” — Education, p. 263.
Our lessons are not a theodicy, the justification of God in the face of evil. Instead, as we’ve said, they’re an attempt to help us work through the inevitable suffering we all face here in a world in which sin is as easy as breathing. What we will try to show is that pain, suffering, and loss don’t mean that God has abandoned us; they mean only that, even as believers, we share now in the common lot of a fallen race. The difference is that, through Jesus and the hope He offers, we can find meaning and purpose can be found in what seems meaningless and purposeless and that somehow, even if we can’t imagine how, we can trust the promise that “all things work together for good to those who love God” (Romans 8:28, NKJV) — the God who, though He made all things, suffered all things, too (and that’s why we love Him).
Gavin Anthony, this quarter’s principal contributor, grew up in Sri Lanka as a missionary kid. He worked as a pastor in England and was conference president in Iceland when he authored these lessons.
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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/introduction-in-the-crucible-with-christ/
ADRA Ragusa. Giornata mondiale del rifugiato
Un gruppo di 20 giovani, dai 18 ai 26 anni, composto da ragazzi approdati nel nostro territorio da diversi Paesi e da ragazzi del luogo, hanno trascorso insieme tre giorni condividendo attività e riflessioni sul tema della fiducia, ha spiegato Dag K. Pontvik, direttore dell’agenzia umanitaria avventista Adra Italia. L’iniziativa, patrocinata dal Comune di Ragusa, è sostenuta dal “Network for Dialogue” e coordinata da Formation et Sensibilisation de Luxembourg e Adra Italia, in collaborazione con associazioni del territorio: Fondazione Proxima e Vivere la Vita. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3C51epg4ps
Ladies Who Do More Than Lunch: Female Pastors Feted by NAD
North American Division (NAD) Ministerial Association has a goal to double the number of female pastors in the division. Number of pastors who are women in the NAD has increased from 101 to nearly 200. The Adventist denomination is still struggling with the issue of women’s ordination. 24 June 2022 | “You need to ask no […] Source: https://atoday.org/ladies-who-do-more-than-lunch-female-pastors-feted-by-nad/