Month: March 2020

In these uncertain times…

I’ve heard this phrase, or some version of it, countless times in the last week.  I understand why it’s popular – things are in a constant state of flux. But I’m not sure that these times are as uncertain as they might seem.  Trouble and tribulation have been part of the human experience since the fall.  

Long before there was a possibility of contracting COVID-19, there was an almost 100% certainty that each one of us would die. Life, it turns out, is most always fatal. And our trouble is that no amount of handwashing, social distancing, hoarding or any other measure will keep us from that day. We have no power to stop death.

But there is someone who does, who already has in fact. His name is Jesus, and He defeated death forever when He rose from the dead. He removed the sting from death’s touch by securing forgiveness for our sins on the Cross. Without Him, to die is to be eternally separated from everything we love and that’s the worst thing that could possibly happen. But for the believer, Christ’s victory is our victory (1 Corinthians 15:57). Death is merely a doorway to be passed through, the beginning of something impossibly better than we’ve ever imagined.

CS Lewis wrote, “It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.” Death may be certain, but it can never cut us off from the steadfast, unending love of God (Romans 8:35-39).

There is plenty of uncertainty in the world at this time, and in every time. One thing we’re not likely to run out of is trouble. But neither can God run out of love and mercy (Lamentations 3:22) and that should fill us with indescribable peace (Philippians 4:7). Let death, whenever and however it comes, find us unafraid, for God can be trusted.

I’ve been thinking about my friend’s son lately.  He had brain surgery on Monday. He’s 14 and it’s the second time.  And this time he’s old enough to ask hard questions without easy answers.  What is God like, that He would let something like this happen? Even harder, why is God letting this happen to me?

 

I don’t have quick answers.  The long answer has to do with the inscrutability of God – that He is God and His ways of doing and thinking are far beyond our understanding (Isaiah 55:8-9).  That’s cold comfort when you’re waiting for the surgeon’s knife. There is comfort, though, in the character of God, in knowing what He is like. He is good and His intentions toward us are good – what He allows in our lives is always, always rooted in His abounding, never-ending love for us (John 15:9).

 

Our certainty that God loves us doesn’t necessarily remove the sting from calamity.  Trouble is still trouble, and a walk in the valley of the shadow of death is nothing like a walk in the park.  It’s not surprising that we should ask why God allows difficulty to happen to us.  Does it mean He doesn’t really love me if He allows this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad thing?  The cross shouts the answer – NO! (Romans 8:35-37) If God loved us enough to send His Son to the cross for us, there is nothing that can cut us off from Him – not our circumstances, not our actions, and not our enemy.

 

We rarely ask why me? when things go well.  We take for granted the good we receive as if it’s a matter of course, to be expected.  Something we deserve because we’re good people who have made good choices. But the truth is that just as we may have done nothing to ‘deserve’ trouble, we also have done nothing to deserve favor.

 

“Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?” Job 2:10

 

There’s a flip side to this, of course.  When trouble comes our way, we should be willing to ask, why not me?  Why shouldn’t I walk this unwanted, difficult path?  Why should trouble come to someone else and not me? Jesus walked the dark byways, the lowly, lonely places in order to bring healing and hope to those who were hurting.  He came for the sick, not the healthy, the lost, not the ones who had all the answers already (Mark 2:17). And if He wasn’t too good for those places, then neither are we (Matthew 10:24).

 

I don’t know how much comfort that brings when you’re 14 and facing brain surgery, but I know it comforts me to know that God has not asked me to go anywhere He wasn’t willing to go or do anything He was unwilling to do and He will never leave me to face anything alone.  Our circumstances are all temporary. Our God does not change and His love will never end.

 

In all their suffering he also suffered, and he personally rescued them.  In his love and mercy he redeemed them. He lifted them up and carried them through all the years.  Isaiah 63:9