Good morning, My Dearest Friends,
Phillip Yancey once said something that I have never forgotten. He said there is one thing worse than disappointment with God. It is disappointment without God.
Several years ago, I found myself in the crosshairs of this very dynamic. I received a call from the funeral home about a young family in our community. Their three-year-old daughter had wandered away from a family picnic by the lake, and hours later they found her little body under a nearby pier. It was not foul play, but rather the kind of tragic accident that happens sometimes. The young parents didn’t go to any church, but as they faced the most unimaginable thing they’ll ever face, they called the local funeral home which in turn called me. I went to their home, where together we prayed, and cried and cried and cried. Their hearts were absolutely broken.
We had the funeral, and there were young people there from all over the region, with that little family seated on the front row. And there is nothing more heart-breaking than a broken-hearted mom. There was nothing that could be said that conveyed much meaning; everybody was wondering, “Why?” When we went outside after the service, two men from M. L. Ford — just two men — carried the little casket to the funeral car. It was hard for me to speak; it was hard to even breathe. But we celebrated that girl’s little life; she had hardly just gotten into this world. My colleague and friend Kevin Gray sang, “I Can Only Imagine.”
As I looked at them, they were so disappointed with life, but I realized they won’t face this disappointment without God. I didn’t try to explain what had happened; I didn’t even try to attach meaning or purpose to it. However, I did say that we can still believe, and we can still trust. And it may be days, it may be weeks, it may be months, it may be years, but God would find a way to use this tragedy in their lives. I believed that over time, God would inject a new kind of grace into their lives and into their marriage. God would leverage that grace, to do something in them, and do something through them. Because that’s what God does.
Sure, they were disappointed. But they didn’t have to be disappointed without God. Because ten days after that funeral, it was Easter. Pain and suffering are not the exception to the rule. They are part of the story that, not only was Jesus acquainted with, but that he introduced into the story — so that we could understand the importance of trust, of rock-solid trust, in our heavenly Father.
When you are going through the toughest thing you will ever face, there will be grace to sustain you. If you can see God in the midst of the suffering and the pain, you won’t give up hope. Your suffering and your pain are not the exceptions; they are a part of the story. It’s an important part of the story. And just as your heavenly Father leveraged the greatest crime in history — the crucifixion of his son — as a reference point for faith, and a reference point for your salvation, if we let him, God will leverage our deepest pain, our darkest hour, and our deepest valley, in the same way.
In the name of the One who is the resurrection and the life,
Bruce Jones,
Pastor Imagine Church
