Once, when I was a little boy, something happened to me that was way beyond my control. I had sustained a dangerous head wound and was helpless. My father took me in his arms and carried me to the hospital which was very near to where we lived. I’m sure my dad lived the event over and over in his mind all the days of his life, even though he rarely mentioned it. My mom and dad were not young when I was born and our age difference could have made him my grandfather. He had lost my sister only five years before and must have died figuratively many times as he carried me to medical help. My father did not cause the accident, would never had let it happen if he had been there. I don’t know what went through his mind as carried me in his arms; perhaps this, “ I would never dream of letting something like this happen to you, but if you will let me, I will love you through this, help you through this, and show you how it will work eventually for your own good.”
In this world bad things happen. When they do, God is there and He, like my dad, says, “ I did not cause this, I would never plan this horrific thing that has happened to you, but know this, if you let Me, I will love you through this, help you through this, and show you how it will work eventually for you own good.”
Surely God is my salvation,
I will trust and not be afraid.
The LORD, the LORD, is my strength and my defense,
He has become my salvation. Isaiah 12:2 (NIV)
My dearest cousin’s husband is dying. How odd that phrase when , in fact, we are all dying, just at different times. For an atheist the idea of death must be one of great loss and despair. To have as your only hope, “like the little dog rover, when you’re dead you’re dead all over,” would not be extremely comforting. I suspect most atheists don’t remind themselves of death very often. Yet, we are surrounded by it. Every day the local paper reports them in the “obit” section. I am very happy to report that my cousin’s family are not atheists and have a comfort available to them that is not the case for people that prefer to “go it alone” without God. There are days when my cousin’s husband just wants to go on and leave the old shell behind, but he lingers. Even in asking, “why,” we know, if we’re honest in our quest for the answer. I believe the answer is the one given by one actor to another in a movie I saw once. One asked the other on the occasion of leaving this life for the next, “It’s hard to let go isn’t it?”
Physical life is precious, it’s a gift of God, yet, eternal life is so much more a gift. The transformation from one to the other is a great mystery. In his great novel, “If Winter Comes”, A.S.M. Hutchinson describes how a young man named Freddie Perch who had just been killed in the war (WW I) came back to help his mother die. He was the type of son that would never allow his mother to even cross a road without him. And here he was to help his mother cross the greatest road in her life.
She was moaning…. That inhabitant of her body had done its preparations and now stood at the door in the darkness, very frightened. It wanted to go back. It had been very accustomed to being here. It could not go back. It did not want to shut the door. The door was shutting. It stood and shrank and whimpered there….. It was old Mrs. Perch that stood there whimpering, shrinking upon the threshold of that huge abyss, wide as space, dark as night …
“Jesus wept.” (John 11:35)
The shortest and perhaps one of the saddest verses in the bible. The occasion was the death of a dear friend, beloved brother of Mary and Martha. Weeping for a friend – the human face of the Master – like us – grieving when death deals its horrific blow. In this case, though, Jesus knew He would raise Lazarus from death shortly. So why did He weep? Perhaps He was touched with Mary and Martha’s grief. Perhaps He was sad that His friend had to suffer through the pain of the death process. Perhaps He knew how happy Lazarus was, and He didn’t want to call him back to earth, far and away from Paradise.
Whatever the reason, Jesus was so moved that He mourned, deeply, for awhile. Even Jesus, with the universe at His beck and call suffered a period of deep, unfathomable grief. Grief of that magnitude cannot be hurried, cannot be wished away, can only be lived through. When grief becomes our lot, our friends, because they love us, want us to be whole again – like we were. They honestly think they know what is best for us, and sometimes it’s not. They want us back like we were before, and not only that, they want us back as soon as possible. What is difficult for those who haven’t taken residence on “Grief Mountain,” is that they have a hard time understanding that what we were before has forever changed. We do not have it in our power to return to what we were. We are different people, and eventually stronger for the Mountain we have ascended, but different. This difference is the by-product of an event we would never have chosen for ourselves, or even an enemy. We will be back, but not exactly the same, and it will take time, more time than some are prepared to invest is us. And that’s ok; we understand and love them anyway.
Please, and I hope you do, enjoy a poem I recently wrote that considers the foregoing thoughts.
THE JOURNEY
Good friend,
Please do not interrupt my flight,
For sometimes I alight
On leaves of loneliness,
Sometimes, on twigs of tears.
And please,
Do not try to catch my wings
As I try to pass,
For somewhere,
In the great Sometime,
I will alight again,
In a sweeter place, on better flowers.
And then I will be again, alright,
If you, dear friend,
Do not interrupt my flight.
Photo by LiebeDich http://www.flickr.com/people/liebedich/ used under Creative Commons agreement
Listen to an audio presentation on this topic here
On May 29th, my darling little granddaughter, Sierra died. She fought a most heinous form of cancer for eighteen months. She died bravely, the way I want to when it’s my turn. I was with her at one o’clock in the morning when she breathed her last. Those eighteen months would take a volume to chronicle which I will never do. But, through all the hours of weeping and happiness, yes, happiness, there is something that I learned that is on my heart to share. Maybe it will help you, I hope so.
People usually deal with dying and death, particularly a tragic one, in pretty much the same way. They believe that no matter the severity of the illness, prayer will more than likely change the outcome. Their core belief is that God will interdict on behalf of the sick person and heal them. Modern medicine does what was impossible only a short time ago, people live who would have died then. These medical marvels are a gift from God.
But what about those who are not healed? And no matter how many, how long or how fervent the prayers, they die. When this happens some will blame God for “taking” their loved one. How could an all knowing, all powerful God let theirs die and let another live? It’s a puzzle that begins to eat at the very center of the believer’s heart. Well meaning friends might say, “If we had only had more faith”, or some other horrific statement, the sick one would have been made well. This is a satanic phrase and even though well intended strikes terror deep into the soul. How guilty would you be if your loved one died because you “didn’t have enough faith?” Yes, we should have faith, enough to move a mountain, as Jesus said, but this faith is not for physical mountains, but spiritual ones.
