Becky and I have just finished a three-week grandparenting marathon that took us from Auburn to Memphis to Whiteman Air Force Base in western Missouri back to Auburn with two of our grandchildren and then to Missouri and back to return said grandchildren to their parents. Oh, and there were children and children-in-law thrown into the mix.
We are happy to be home in our quiet house, but the wave of mild melancholy was undeniable when I went into the spare bedroom and saw the stuffed animals (from our stash) left on the unmade bed as we left early for our return trip to Missouri.
We are in a good season of life. Thanks be to God.
Even in the past week, however, we have been reminded that the good life is not guaranteed to any of us – followers of Christ or not. On Sunday evening a dear and good friend in Brazil died. She was still young and leaves her husband, a kind and faithful man, and two sons, ages 12 and 5. On Wednesday a friend wrote saying that friends of his had lost their nearly full-term baby in utero. Our friend, the new widower in Brazil, and my friend’s friends are committed Christians. Their faith did not prevent unimaginable sorrow from breaking into their lives like a thief breaking into a house that has been a safe and nurturing home.
This morning’s newsfeed linked to two articles whose headlines caught my attention as I was thinking about the week: “When the Story Doesn’t Have a Happy Ending” appeared in Christianity Today, and is a sad story from the mission field; “Why Did My Life have to be Hard?” is from Desiring God, and is a more reflective piece. Both are worth reading.
Members of the church in Brazil had prayed for our friend’s recovery and had raised money for treatments not available through the government health insurance program. The baby lost to my friend’s friends would have been the third child in a caring and healthy family. Neither story has a “happy ending,” and we dare not force one on them – now or for as long as life endures.
The Psalms give words to the questions of our hearts:
- Why, O LORD, do you stand far away? Psalm 10:1
- I say to God, my rock: “Why have you forgotten me? Psalm 42:9
- Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression? Psalm 42:24
- God, why do you cast us off forever? Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture? Psalm 74:1
- LORD, why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me? Psalm 88:14
Why? Too often we rush to offer our anemic or cruel answers to the unanswerable question. “She is in a better place.” “God will provide another child.” Worst of all, perhaps, “God wanted to bring her home, or now God has another voice in his cherub choir.”
It has been said that Job’s friends did the right thing in coming to sit with him – until they opened their mouths. We do well to sit alongside our friends. We listen as they ask, “why?” And we mostly say nothing. We know, in fact, that some stories do not have a happy ending. We know that life can be hard. We don’t need to tell them that an answer to their why question will not be found, but neither do we respond to their deep questions with shallow answers.
The Desiring God article concludes with words of strong hope.
To be a Christian means to believe in our Lord’s bodily resurrection (Romans 10:9), and to believe in his resurrection entails believing in our own resurrections (1 Corinthians 15). Our hope for the ultimate redemption of our bodies is, as Paul puts it, the hope in which we were saved (Romans 8:24).
This hope, Paul tells us, keeps us from losing heart, for while “our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16).
Why does a young mother die? Why does a baby never see the family waiting to welcome her into its life? We must allow our grieving friends to ask their questions over and over again. We have no answers to the “why?” questions. But we have a God who has spoken hope into our world of woe. We cling to the hope of the gospel as we sit awhile with our friends and as we live our lives in all their seasons.