This post is dedicated to a dear friend,
mentor, and teacher. His lessons of
love, compassion, faith, justice, reconciliation and ministry will forever and
always impact my life. I know you are
face to face with Jesus, Richard. But we
miss you already.
This past week I had the opportunity to
be the speaker at Covenant Park Bible Camp in Mahtowa, MN. It was a privilege to share the gospel with a
bunch of junior highers and see how God was intersecting and impacting their
stories. Throughout the week I kept
reiterating the truth, “We were not meant for brokenness and we were not made
for death!” We experience both this side
of the Eschaton, but that is not the end of our stories. We are not defined by death because there is
hope for wholeness, reconciliation, healing and life found in Christ. As one theologian once put it, “We experience
the full brunt of death in this life. We
feel the pain, loss, and outrage. But
the gospel points us towards hope in the midst of that heartache.”
There were times this week when I was
overwhelmed by the pain and suffering that these young people had or were
experiencing. Parental suicide, cancer,
substance abuse, broken families…so much death and brokenness woven into their
lives. And what about God? Where is He in all this? Why the brokenness? For these questions I want to speak against
the standard Christian responses that try to explain away pain. God is not a crutch in the midst of this
hurting; He is not allowing these afflictions as part of His divine plan. It is not His will that we experience death.
NO! God is outraged at their
pain! He is weeping for their
suffering. It was NOT His intention to
stick these kids into shitty situations and see how that would impact their
faith. He never created us to experience
brokenness. His plan for our lives was
and has always been life and life with Him.
He sent His Son to die on the cross so that redemption could break into the
reality of death and transform the fallen nature of this world.
God has given us the freedom to walk
towards Him or walk away from Him. In
that autonomy brokenness entered the world.
We experience brokenness we choice for ourselves and the consequences of
others brokenness. But Christ was never
a backup plan. God: Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit, always intended a way for all humanity and creation to come back
into relationship with Him. Back to life
and life to the full. But in the midst
of the plan of redemption and the Kingdom of life coming near we still
experience the full brunt of death.
But death is not the end of our
story. God is with us in our pain, our
loss, our outrage, our suffering. There is
hope for the present, but ultimate hope for all that has been broken to be set
right. That is the message of the
gospel. That is the hope I pray those
kids take home with them….Then today, as I prepared to reflect on this past
week I received the news that my friend Richard passed away. Instantly I was filled with outrage, pain, a
sense of loss as an amazing and faithful man was taken too soon from this world. I know he is with God. I know death does not define his ultimate
story. But today I am again overwhelmed
by the brokenness of the world. I weep
for the loss of a friend. I weep and am
outraged that death is part of our human experience.
I pray for Richard’s wife, for his
children, his family, his friends, and all those who are impacted by his
death. I pray that God would meet them
in their pain and give them peace and comfort.
I pray that hope would break into the reality of death. We are not meant for brokenness…we are not
meant for death. Our story will one day
be defined by life, redemption, healing, reconciliation, and wholeness…in the
meanwhile I pray our stories would be defined by the hope and promise of life
found in God. In the face of death I
proclaim hope…not to nullify the experience of death, not to explain it away or
lessen the loss, but to remember that this is not the end of our stories.
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