Into the Fire

Some of you have kept up with the daily accounts of Kristy Dykes’ battle with aggressive brain cancer. Without a miraculous healing from our Lord, He will take her home. I don’t know John Dobbs, but I just got an email from Spiritual Oasis blogger Bill Williams asking for prayer for the family of John Dobbs due to the burial of their son just days before his high school graduation. Mr. Dobbs’ walk through the onset of grief is recorded on his blog in profound voice. Who would ask to travel his path? I saw my niece today and learned her oldest daughter is getting a divorce. Knowing her marriage has been a struggle for many years, it remains difficult to hear of the death knell for yet another marriage with two young daughters involved. In addition to these sad items, our neighbor informed my husband of the discovery of advanced prostate cancer. When my husband assured the promise of prayer for him, our neighbor cried.

These are just snippets of life on planet earth. Challenged on all sides by death in all its morose forms. Leaving us gasping, weeping, cursing, sorrowing. How can anyone live without God? And worse, how can anyone die without God?

We have no outlet. All roads may have led to Rome, but ultimately they lead to death. Some soon. Some quick. Some slow. Some painful. Some peaceful. Someday.

Who wants to think about it? Not me, but I confess it hovers like a tasteless odorless gas waiting to extinguish my life. If I don’t call upon my Lord, I will wallow in fear of its sordid fangs and hyperventilate, becoming acutely aware of every single ache and pain and the ramrod beating of my heart, sure to quit on me with my very next breath.

It’s easy to spout Christian-ese when someone else experiences the thwarting by a tragedy, but wait until it’s you and your family. All those true and often spoken phrases which casually but meaningfully spill from the lips of those who’ve never lost anyone force a new unrealized level of control lest we scream obscenities at their callousness.

Sometimes it takes time to fall at the feet of Jesus and plead for His mercy and grace to be able to abide this life any longer in the midst of such ugly trauma. How could this be? Why, God?! I know, God, why not? Why should any of us be spared the jabs and stabs of life cursed by sin? We know this. We do. But with the pain wrapped around us like the suffocating, squeezing enclosure of the spider’s prison web, we choke to grab air even though we wonder if we want to breathe anymore enduring such a loss.

There is nothing but bleakness. And we do wonder if life truly goes on. We understand it does for others. Outside of us. People are actually laughing, playing, making love, singing, cheering . . . Somewhere. Yes, somewhere there is rejoicing. As if we don’t exist, as if we never did. Because this life as we know it keeps rolling. After all, we were laughing, playing, making love, singing, and cheering when someone else suffered through what we now feel. How could we?! We chastise ourselves.

But then we are forced to realize unequivocally that life is but a breath, a mist, our days are numbered. Cliché or not, we come to breathe in Truth. Its transcending power gains a foothold. And we repeat silently with tears: a time to be born and a time to die . . . a time to weep and a time to laugh . . . a time to mourn and a time to dance . . . and we conclude all wisdom belongs to the One who gave us life and the One who takes it back—we being the determiners of our eternal residence.

The bleakness eventually will shred and be replaced by a resigned hope which grows in strength somehow as the years pass. We say “untimely” or “too short” applying them to death and life, but we are forced to see that we had no part in any of it. God knows. And that both hurts and comforts. We are so human at our core.

If we live long enough, we will yearn for reunions. We will choose to believe, to know, to carve out our faith in a hopeless world, and cling to the only One who expends hope in abundance to all who are willing to drink it in, to absorb it, to trust in the One who pours it out and refills it gladly.

Thank you, God, for your benevolence toward us. We know your love is deeper, more unfathomable, than we can imagine. Our finite minds are the reason we flounder in grief. Please extend your abundant mercies to the ones mentioned above, Lord, each one needing a special and unique touch from your very hand. Thank you for your death, Jesus, that we might live, and breathe, and have our being. Thank you, Holy Spirit, for bringing the Comfort and Counsel that we cannot conjure up or supply in times of great darkness. We love you, Lord, and our hope is in you. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.