‘The Entombment’ by Daniele Crespi 1620’s
“For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time,
and then vanisheth away.” James 4:14 (AV)
I write within 24 hours of the death of a friend. I write on New Year’s Eve. I inflate my connection by calling him my friend. I think we only ever talked about Kentucky basketball. I was pastor to his missionary family during their Budapest years. He died when his truck left the road early yesterday morning in Atlanta. He was twenty-two. He knew the Lord Christ savingly. Dear God, what a difference that makes.
When we contemplate the Being of God we are inevitably staggered by mysteries, complexities, impossibilities. Eternity, Infinity, Trinity. Try wrapping your brain around that. Yet the moral dimension of God’s character is also a mystery to fallen flesh. Our vantage point is clouded. Our judgment is corrupt. The primary theological enterprise in the moral realm is the accommodation of our understanding of divine goodness to our experience of human pain. Grace is sorely needed. We would like more answers. We would like more faith. It is harder to be orthodox when our hearts are crushed.
I knew another young man, the son of intimate friends, who died in 2009. It is a fellowship with God, a stewardship from God which no one wants, this business of losing sons.
God will not prove His love for us by preventing the suffering or death of someone we love. I did not say He would not protect those we love. Is there anyone we care about still alive and prospering? It is because God protects them. We believe in Providence. I said God will not prove His love to us by Providence.
I did not say we cannot ask God to protect those we love. We believe in prayer. I said that God will not prove His love for us by answered prayer.
I make these emphatic declarations for the simple reason that God proves His love in a way quite different. He proves His love by refusing to protect the One He loves.
“He who did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all,
will He not also with Him freely give us all things?” Romans 8:32
To doubt God’s love when those we care about are taken is to deem the crucifixion of God’s only Son an insufficient demonstration of favor. Of course we don’t mean to. But sorrow is a suffocating thing.
Probably the greatest thing, the hardest thing, we trust God with is who dies first and who dies next. The best man in the world once cried out,
“O my son, Absalom, my son, my son, Absalom!
Would God that I had died instead of thee…” 2 Samuel 18:33
We want to insist that heaven be adorned exclusively with the aged. We want to, but we can’t.
If I knew what God knows, and I do not, and if I were good, and I am not, I would do what God does. I would allow what God allows.
2009 is soon gone.
So shall our lives be.
It is therefore all the more urgent that we secure a life which cannot be forfeited.
A life purchased by the Dread Ransom of the Blood Royal.
We draw One Year Closer.
“For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time,
and then vanisheth away.” James 4:14 (AV)
I write within 24 hours of the death of a friend. I write on New Year’s Eve. I inflate my connection by calling him my friend. I think we only ever talked about Kentucky basketball. I was pastor to his missionary family during their Budapest years. He died when his truck left the road early yesterday morning in Atlanta. He was twenty-two. He knew the Lord Christ savingly. Dear God, what a difference that makes.
When we contemplate the Being of God we are inevitably staggered by mysteries, complexities, impossibilities. Eternity, Infinity, Trinity. Try wrapping your brain around that. Yet the moral dimension of God’s character is also a mystery to fallen flesh. Our vantage point is clouded. Our judgment is corrupt. The primary theological enterprise in the moral realm is the accommodation of our understanding of divine goodness to our experience of human pain. Grace is sorely needed. We would like more answers. We would like more faith. It is harder to be orthodox when our hearts are crushed.
I knew another young man, the son of intimate friends, who died in 2009. It is a fellowship with God, a stewardship from God which no one wants, this business of losing sons.
God will not prove His love for us by preventing the suffering or death of someone we love. I did not say He would not protect those we love. Is there anyone we care about still alive and prospering? It is because God protects them. We believe in Providence. I said God will not prove His love to us by Providence.
I did not say we cannot ask God to protect those we love. We believe in prayer. I said that God will not prove His love for us by answered prayer.
I make these emphatic declarations for the simple reason that God proves His love in a way quite different. He proves His love by refusing to protect the One He loves.
“He who did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all,
will He not also with Him freely give us all things?” Romans 8:32
To doubt God’s love when those we care about are taken is to deem the crucifixion of God’s only Son an insufficient demonstration of favor. Of course we don’t mean to. But sorrow is a suffocating thing.
Probably the greatest thing, the hardest thing, we trust God with is who dies first and who dies next. The best man in the world once cried out,
“O my son, Absalom, my son, my son, Absalom!
Would God that I had died instead of thee…” 2 Samuel 18:33
We want to insist that heaven be adorned exclusively with the aged. We want to, but we can’t.
If I knew what God knows, and I do not, and if I were good, and I am not, I would do what God does. I would allow what God allows.
2009 is soon gone.
So shall our lives be.
It is therefore all the more urgent that we secure a life which cannot be forfeited.
A life purchased by the Dread Ransom of the Blood Royal.
We draw One Year Closer.
4 comments:
I have no words.
Having lost both a father and a beloved husband I can identify and wish I could express these difficult things the way you do. Blessings!
Dear Ronnie,
I´d like to ask you concerning a brother of mine, a member of our church in Nove Mesto nad Metuji, Czech Republic. He´s got a job in Budapest office of Lufthansa, he´s going to work there for about two years. I warmly recommended to him your ministry, he´d like to attend your church. He knows where you meet, I hope he turns up soon,
thank you, God keep blessing you,
Petr Pokorny
"The primary theological enterprise in the moral realm is the accommodation of our understanding of divine goodness to our experience of human pain. Grace is sorely needed."
Wow. Well said. And I know there's more depth to these words than I first realize.
Thanks for the perspective check.
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