You may not remember me immediately; this is Matthew Carte. I attended a couple of grad classes with you at TNU shortly before accepting my first pastoral assignment.

I stumbled upon your web page through the Emergent Nazarenes Blogpage. I regret to hear of your travail through the way of brokenness, though it befalls all of us at various point in our journeys. I also was saddened to hear of this tragedy in your old stomping grounds.

Death has visited my congregation on two occasions in the past 2 months; both unexpectedly, premature, and tragic. This was preceded in the last 6 months by 3 married couples separating or divorcing for various reasons. All of this during my first year in my second pastoral assignment.

Oddly enough, it was during this season of familial distresses that my DS would eventually ask me, one on one, at a District Event(with minimal foreknowledge of what I was experiencing), “Matthew, how have you witnessed the footprints of Jesus this week in ministry?” To which I responded to this effect, “I believe that I have been reminded that the footprints of Jesus are manifested even in the midst of life’s chaos”.

Though I concede that the discourses of Theodicy are purely Modernistic and inherently problematic, I still find my humanity (and perhaps traces of embedded Modernity) causing me to nevertheless ask, “Why?” at various times.

Perhaps it is best to remember during our “brokenness” that it is the Son who willingly surrenders His Body to the powerful banality of evil, in order to become “broken”, as an act of obedience to the Father in and through the Spirit. However, one must not forget that it is the overwhelmingly pervasive Triune love that the Father has for the Son that will effect the promise of eschatological resurrection in and through the Spirit also.

The interim space between Good Friday and Easter morning is the path that we travail presently in human history.

Grace and Peace,

Matthew Carte