Into the Fire

There are times of sorrow, difficulty, trauma, and tragedy when life goes wrong. Our hopes are dashed, our faith is shaken and jerked away from us for a bit or for a season, and sometimes it feels like life as we’ve known it will never be the same.

If you haven’t had to deal with these kinds of experiences in your life to date, be grateful. We all know that life contains trouble. Our Lord told us so. For every level of human existence He has provided Himself as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the Overcomer of the world’s evil and problems, the constant companion of those who accept Him into their lives.

My oldest son knew a Christian couple, a man whose wife suffered from extreme and frequent migraines. She took medication upon medication prescribed to her in an effort to find her some relief from debilitating pain over a significant period of time. She prayed, he prayed, their church prayed. Every believer who knew them prayed. She committed suicide.

Wednesday we will attend a funeral for a 44 year old friend of ours who loved the Lord with his whole heart. He owned a business with heavy equipment, knew all the ins and outs of our demanding county requirements as well as adjacent counties, conducting his work with integrity and desiring to help whomever he could with his skills. He took every opportunity to preach the gospel, being faithful to study the Word. His life had been difficult from his childhood, suffering at times with drug addictions and depression. His wife had come through terrible and similar circumstances prior to and during their life together, but in recent years they had conquered most of the demons.

However, our friend had extreme periodic back pain, fighting with the medications to help manage that and other pain from what we learned were several tumors growing inside of him. And so on Friday sometime, he either over-medicated himself or gave up on the pain and put an end to it. No one knows for sure.

No one except God.

And if you’re expecting a “sermon” from all of this, don’t. I don’t have one. All I have are tears.

Father, I know so little. You know it all. Be close to those who remain, Lord. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.