People who know me well know that I love to talk. I love to debate theology and philosophy, the big topics which undergird faith and life. But there are some things which still rob me of words – which leave me rambling and searching in vain for a rational explanation.
Death is one of them.
This past weekend, a friend died in a car accident. It is an aching feeling to know that the email I sent this past Friday will go forever unanswered – that the message she sent a few days earlier will be the last I ever receive. It seems cruel that our enthusiasm and excitement over seeing each in just a month’s time should go unfulfilled – as will a second visit planned for a month later. Startling, that we shall never meet, in fact, this side of heaven.
In her last email, she noted that “God-willing” we would see each other soon. But God did not so will. And this is one of the things beyond my comprehension: how God could take away one so young, with so much seemingly left to accomplish. How he could leave so many behind to grieve. It is striking that, in her last email to me, she herself remarked jokingly upon the “inopportune” timing of death.
I cannot fathom how a good God can do such a thing. Not that I doubt God is good, mind you. But his goodness in such matters is to me incomprehensible – a deep mystery into which we peer at our peril.
Faith cannot cling to such shadows and darkness. So let us then cling to Christ. Let us cling to the manger, where God steps out of the heavens and into our lives. Let us cling to the cross, where he bears our sin and our pain and every evil we shall ever know. Let us, at last, cling to the wounds of his living hands – the hole in his breathing side. For these are the tokens of Love. This is the visible God. And this God who is Love has promised new life to absent friends.
Nor does he forget us who on this earth remain. For while He shall not wipe away all tears until that great day, he gives us this promise for the here and now: that he weeps with us. He clings to us and bids us cling to him, as we journey weary steps in the rain of earthly sorrows. And as he bears us up, he whispers in our ears, “At eve, it shall be light” (Zechariah 14:7).
Until we meet in that Far Country A.S.
In Jesus’ Love – Mathew Block
