Grief, Glory, and a Dear Old Friend

Grief is sometimes a surprisingly slow burner.  Tragedy deals you a very shrewd, very unexpected sort of blow, but rather than finding yourself immediately laid on your beam ends like a ship in a hurricane, you merely shrug, or scowl, or raise an eyebrow.  This is your brain's equivalent of a counterweight on an elevator, I suppose - it keeps you from falling too quickly.  An hour later, though, you feel it, and you hate yourself for that shrug or that eyebrow, and the tragedy turns over in your mind a hundred different ways, unbidden, for day or weeks or months, until you wonder if you will ever cease to discover new reasons the said tragedy is so tragic. 

A few weeks back, I received word that my dear friend Nick had been badly injured in an accident.  We had been best friends throughout our teenage years (he moved to Colorado a few years after high school).  The years of teendom are, nearly invariably, the silliest years accorded to the cycle of humanity:  indeed, if you possess such a friend as is able to endure you through that complete, interminable succession of seven years, this is a friend indeed. 

I will spare you, dear reader, of the descriptions of our bookish exploits and nerdish frivolities.  I remember these times with great fondness indeed, but they lie behind the realm of the discussion at hand (and at any rate, it is difficult to stop such amusing nostalgia once it is begun).  However, it is enough at this point to explain that for long years, we were inseparable friends.

The day after his accident, he succumbed to his injuries in a quiet hospital and slipped away.  Amazing to consider, no?  Only 36 hours before that, he had been as healthy and strong as anyone aged at 30 years.  How quickly one's situation changes.  Children are born, people join in marriage, fortunes are made, souls enter eternity. 

And in the midst of all of these things, God is at work.  As we dismantle the tragedies in our lives, we naturally attempt to reassemble them in ways that make sense to us, but how futile this endeavor is, how hollow these efforts sound, how weak and insubstantial are the end results, unless we find the Lord in the center of it all.  Even if the tragedy in question is a loved one who died saving a busload of orphans from certain death, the clearcut nobility of such a death can hardly surmount the sad reality that your loved one is gone, and that in perhaps 50 years, there will be scarcely anyone who remembers this incredible sacrifice. 

And then, of course, you have, quite suddenly, this sense that basically anything can happen.  I am, most decidedly, not referring to your "I Believe I Can Fly" high school guidance counselor telling you to reach for the stars and be yourself - no; I mean that all of those things which you assumed could only touch your life if you saw them in a newspaper quickly begin to seem more real - house fires, muggers, accidents, terminal illnesses, and so forth.

Again, though, if we can at all, we must meet with tragedies knowing that God is at work, and that His work, furthermore, is always purposeful, is always in keeping with His character, and does extend to all things (cf. Rom. 9:21-24, Ps. 135:6, Ps. 33:8-11, Dan. 4:35, and many others).  The sovereign purpose is glory - salvation of undeserving sinners with staggering love, grace, patience, and righteousness, and conquest of evil by means of infinite power, wisdom, and righteousness.

We have discussed this before, so I merely touch on it here.  The point is, God's sovereign work gives us not merely a reason, but the reason, that things happen:  because He is somehow glorified by it.  Some will reread that statement with horror, but yes, God has designed even tragedies for His own glorious ends.  Think of the cruelties that Joseph's brothers visited upon him, and then think how God used those circumstances.  Said Joseph to them much later, "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive." (Gen. 50:20)

Other examples abound in Scripture, and once you begin to identify them, you cannot help but see them everywhere in its pages.  Paul and Silas are imprisoned wrongfully and beaten brutally, but (literally) at the end of the day, the jailer is saved by the grace of Christ (Acts 16).  The Jerusalem saints were persecuted and scattered, but this dispersion caused the gospel to go forth into new places (Acts 8:1-4).  Even the death of Jesus Christ, the most appalling treachery and crime in all of creation's history, was predestined by God to produce the only way of salvation for a lost and wayward race of sinners.  Incredible.  Go and read Acts 4:27-28 this minute if there resides any doubt in your mind that God Himself was the architect of Christ's death.  Go and read Isaiah 53:10.  Does this not add yet another layer of glory to Christ's death, to consider that the Godhead conspired to bring it about in order to secure the salvation of Christ's church? 

Walking through life with an understanding of God's sovereign purpose of glory helps us to declare, "I cannot say why this tragedy has befallen us, but I know beyond doubt that God is in control, and that this tragedy is an essential part of His plan, and that by this, God is sure to be glorified."  Because we trust in His wisdom and goodness (having tasted them again and again), this sort of understanding is a boon to the distressed believer; it offers real joy in the midst of admitted sorrow. 

And if the tragedy is appallingly black and difficult, let the arduous burden of sadness convince our hearts still more of the overwhelming greatness and surpassing importance of God's glory:  this may be harder than anything you had ever reckoned you would (or could) face, but this means that God's glory is more incredible, and more essential, than you had ever imagined.  There is great purpose at work.  If God has promised us that we will, upon our deaths, experience an eternity free of hardship in His very presence, then He is surely not trifling with us in this life by allowing such tragedy.

We can bring this full circle, then.  I do not know the many reasons why God designed that my friend should die at age 30, but I know that He will be rightly glorified in all of this.  I can say this with all my heart.  And I think that one reason among many, perhaps, is so that His gospel might be proclaimed.  Below is part of an e-mail that my friend Nick sent me years ago; it is undoubtedly the best thing he ever told me in all of our years of acquaintance:

As you know we've both grown up in Christian homes. Myself, I thought I had become a believer WAY back in the day when I was but five or six years old. Did the whole "accept Jesus into my heart" deal. And sure, I spent a good amount of my time serving the church, doing missions, and the like. And I have no doubt that God had me doing those things for His glory, but all those times I was so brokenhearted and downtrodden by the things going on in my life, I never realized God was simply trying to get my attention and let me know that I wasn't saved. How do I know that to be true? How do I know that it wasn't just me being a backslider, or just not being a good enough follower of God? Simple. I never understood sin to be what it was. I was never shown the Law as a mirror to help me SEE my sin. And past that, I thought I was saved. I was proud, selfish...I did good things in the name of God, but I was like the people who will come to God during Judgement Day and be turned away even though they did all those great things in His Name.  

I never read my Bible. I never hungered for it, I never wanted to be at church and looked for ways to leave early. So that's my setup. My preface for my conversion.

Years and years and years have gone by. Twenty three to be exact. Many of which I was fully capable of making a wise decision regarding God. In the last couple years since moving to Colorado life has been pretty miserable. But, something was still missing. Remember now, I THOUGHT I had God in my life, but He wasn't dwelling within me. So somehow by a miracle I started listening to a radio talk show called The Way of the Master Radio. I had been given some from a friend of mine, but it was a year or two before I even tried listening. Well, Way of the Master is based on some really neat ideas. Ideas of the Bible, go figure. Here's their deal: Law to the proud, grace to the humble. They do a lot of phone fishing (witnessing to people on the streets) and ask some questions such as these: Do you think you're a good person? What do you think happens to you when you die? Have you ever lied? Stolen something? Used God's name in vain? So basically these people brought it to my attention that I am a filthy rotten sinner and there is absolutely NOTHING I could do on my own to save myself from eternal damnation. That scared the living daylights out of me. I was never certain in my salvation, always had doubts. So I heard these messages and started thinking. I was consumed by the fact that I was a sinner. And I knew Jesus died for me, but I couldn't get past it all. Was I saved? Was I lost still? Way of the Master asks some simple questions to help you see if you are in the faith. Nothing special. "Is Jesus precious to you? Do you read your Bible without fail each and every day and enjoy it? Do you share your faith? Are you growing in holiness?" I looked back on my life. I could not answer yes to any of those questions. In fact I was worse off than before.

So one evening after I got home from work I fell on my face and wept. I repented for my sins and I put my full trust in Jesus. I understood that He really DID die on that horrible cross to save me from my wretched self. I realized that if I would have died the day before I would have spent my eternity in Hell and I was terrified of that thought. But God is so ultimately kind that I couldn't help but stay on my knees and cry for a good long time. Every time I think about it I can't help but weep with joy due to His kindness. I am radically new. I've been regenerated!!!! I absolutely love reading my Bible and read it every day. I love worship and understand what it's really about. I've stopped watching a lot of movies and shows that I used to like. I stopped listening to a lot of music. I'm thankful, I watch my words, my thinking is radically different. I'm learning tons of new stuff each day and I know God has a lot of work yet to be done in my life. Ha ha, if I were to name all the things He's working on currently with me it'd be a pretty big list. I hate sin because God hates it. My conscience is way more active these days. I know it was dead previously. I had no real remorse. I can't even attend church anymore without being in tears through the worship. Even now as I listen to some stuff I'm ready to cry.

He is so kind, isn't He? So loving, so amazing. So big and powerful and sovereign and righteous and just. So perfect, so merciful. "Indescribable, uncontainable. You placed the stars in the sky and You know them by name. You are amazing God." So cool. So cool...!

So yeah, that's my story.

How Glorious Is Glorious?

God lays waste to the great city of the Antichrist, bringing it and its people to utter and eternal ruin.  His holy servants rejoice at the everlasting punishment to visited upon those wretched adherents:  "Hallelujah!  Her smoke rises up forever and ever." (Rev. 19:3b)

Christ and the disciples see a man blind from birth.  Jesus explains that this man was made blind (by God - Ex. 4:11) "so that the works of God might be displayed in him." (John 9:3b) This long-established plan could not have happened without sin in the world to blight our race. 

God Himself declared, "I am the Lord, and there is no other, the One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these." (Is. 45:6b-7)

These snapshots from scripture, and many others like them, give us to believe that God is perhaps closer to everything than we might have guessed.  We begin to see, put plainly, that God's plan from eternity past willfully included a sin-soaked world.  While we absolutely cannot, and never should, suggest that God is the author of evil, or the agent of its introduction into our midst, neither can we suppose that God was taken by surprise in Genesis 3, or that He had to change His plan after sin came in.  No; what man means for evil, God means for good (Gen. 50:20).  Not a single purpose of the Lord's goes unaccomplished (Is. 46:10), so we may say that sin surely did not turn the least of His plans aside.  If God is absolutely certain to accomplish all of His intended purposes, we must acknowledge that this means He leaves nothing, absolutely nothing, to chance, so His plans necessarily include sin.

This is tremendously comforting.  If God is sovereign over evil, but is Himself holy, then He has the upper hand in all things, and we may rest securely in His promises.  If, on the other hand, we are sovereign over evil, or perhaps Satan, then this inordinate hole in God's absolute control constitutes a terrifying, and probably condemning, idea.  Evil can best us, but more frightening yet, evil can best God Himself.  Praise Him that this is not so!

But if indeed God is sovereign over evil, as is easily demonstrated by scripture, why should there be evil at all?  We cannot content ourselves with the commonly-held thought that He desires the exercise of human free will, and so evil must be suffered to exist.  We have already made mention of Isaiah 46:10 - God accomplishes all of His purposes, so He must necessarily have created this world, and everything in it, for the fulfillment of His purposes.  There is no room, then, for the preeminence of man's will alongside God's:  only one can reign supreme, and scripture declares that it is God's that does so.  And even if this were not so, if God were reluctant to allow evil into the world, He would not have orchestrated things such that a single sin devastated all things as it did.  God would not have allowed sin to propagate by default into every descendent of Adam and Eve.  He would not have cursed the entire world.  He would not have allowed Job to endure such demonic hardships for no fault of his own.  He certainly would not have chosen to direct a demon to entice Ahab to go into a losing battle in 1 Kings 22, and so forth.  The effect of sin upon the world and upon humanity were decided solely by the Creator, and His decision casts much light on His intentions.

There must be another reason besides that of man's presumed free will.  Paul reminds us of a piece of Old Testament truth:  "For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.'" (Rom. 9:17) Pharaoh, that great opposer of God's purposes and God's people, was raised up, and indeed allowed to live (Ex. 9:16) expressly so that, in dealing with his treachery, God could show Himself to be mighty and so spread His fame across the world. 

This is simply astonishing.  As we reel from the implications, Paul goes further:  "What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?" (Rom. 9:22)  So the display of God's wrath enters the equation, as well as that of His patience.  Yet again, and most tremendously:  " And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory." (Rom. 9:23)

Glory!  As believers, can our hearts help but quicken at the mere mention of this word in connection with our Lord?  This is the heart of the matter, friend.  How can God show His merciful disposition?  In the forgiveness of sinners; mercy has no more immediate value in a sinless world than a candle in the hot sun.  It would be admirable, but not necessary, and certainly not understood.  How can He display perfect patience?  In not destroying us inherently wicked humans where we stand!  And what of His justice?  He must hold all of this world of evil to His just standards, and pour out His just wrath for His children upon His own Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to see that justice satiated.  And would we know the strength of His power without His conquest of evil, even the very evil in our own hearts? 

Grace, power, justness, wrath, patience, and so on - these are mere words until we see them come alive in the glorious deeds of our great God.  We should not understand them at all, but for our fallen, wretched existence.  The working of evil, although loathsome to God in every respect, is the backdrop against which the manifold triumphs of His perfect and unchanging character are thrown into brilliant and razor-sharp relief.  The Lord has actively included evil in His all-encompassing purposes, not because He loves it, but because He hates it with a prostrating, vengeful, eternal vigor, and He desires that His creation understand Him in this way - there is immense anger and immense power, but from this fearsome understanding we survey also the vastness of His mercy and love.

In a sentence, He makes His glory the most important thing in the universe.  Being perfectly righteous, God does this because it is wholly fitting that we should cherish and worship the unimaginable perfections which reside, solely and eternally, in Him.  Who could be more worthy of our attention, our devotion, and our allegiance than He?  Thus He does great things, things that muzzle human pride and arrest human strength, because He seeks to unveil "the riches of His glory." 

Evil exists because God, in His glorious wisdom, has decided that He may work against it and so show His glory.  Some may balk at such a thought, apparent though it is in His book.  They say, "Are you telling me that all the pain and all the death and all the cruelty that have ever existed in this age have their existence simply so that God can show who He is?"  To this, a simple "Yes!" will do.

It is dangerous, friend, to question God's omniscient prerogatives.  Such an attitude as this reveals that we have already formed an opinion, altogether too low, about the importance of God's glory, and have in fact allowed this opinion to shape our philosophy.  We say, in effect, "God's glory is not great enough for this world of evil in which we live."  How sadly backwards is this thinking!  We must come at things from the opposite standpoint:  the Bible says that God has suffered evil to propagate into this world, according to His longstanding decree, in order that He might be far more strongly glorified.  Rather than looking about us and scoffing the sheer impossibility of this, we must look about us and conclude that God's glory must simply be far, far more glorious than we had ever imagined, and far, far stronger than we had ever considered.  What effect might this realization have upon our perception of the Lord, or upon our attitude toward our own lives and hardships? 


Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head, and he fell to the ground and worshiped.  He said,

"Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
And naked I shall return there.
The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord."

- Job 1:20-21