I am a man nearly 80 and a follower of Jesus since age 9. I began early in my walk reading of the Holocaust in Europe and the gulag system of Stalin and the writings of Solzhenitsyn and the sufferings of Christians for their faith for 2000+ years, though honestly I began to read more out of curiosity than trying to learn of suffering as such. That changed with my own life experiences and I tried to understand the 'why'. I studied Christian theology in bible college and seminary. None answered the question of why...the one question that begs for an answer when we are 'in it'.
I lost my wife of 52 years, a Godly, holy woman who suffered the ravages of cancer for 12 years. . . she never complained or blamed God or others. . . I didn't fare so well.
I have navigated some of the sufferings of this broken, dying world only by faith. Nick Cave, the musician who lost his son and nearly his life from the grief of it said "hope is optimism with a broken heart". A sufferer of the Holocaust said, ". . . the Jewish People must wait. (for the Messiah) They must live inside the rhythm of divine time." And from a Christian writer of another era, ". . .in this very moment in Christ we can touch our brethren six or seven thousand miles away. That is a miracle.... This Life is eternal Life; it is timeless; it knows no space; everything is present when Jesus is present." (T Austin-Sparks)
We are in exile as believers in a world the Good God never intended. . . he gave freedom to choose that our love for him might have value. We chose wrong.
We listen because there are no words or answers. We look at those struggling to hold on to faith, being with those who suffer is what the Lord Jesus uses to carry them through to a better day and somehow, ironically that is the way we survive it.
The Lord bless and strengthen you Sarah. I agree with you in prayer for this precious child and her family and the others.
Sarah! Its so good to see you again! I haven’t seen you in my TL for a long time and thought maybe you’d dropped off of Substack. So glad you’re still here…
I was tearing up reading through this essay and thinking about what's at stake. To think that Jesus willingly joined mankind in this pain and sorrow is mind boggling.
Sarah, I am praying fiercely for you, Maya, her family, and all those who are touched by her story. John Piper, at the website Desiring God, teaches so eloquently on how to reconcile doctrine of suffering and sovereignty. There was a recent article on His website titled The Power of Hoping In God's Meticulous Providence which I have found extremely helpful with this wrestle you are presently engaged in.
Whenever I have found myself in a position of feeling anxious, fearful, distracted by evil and this world, I find the ultimate source is my understanding of who God is is far too small. The reality is He's so much bigger than I can imagine. You already know He's big enough to have stopped the tragedy, but do you believe He could be big enough to have caused the tragedy because it was the best possible thing to have happened? Can you trust Him to be big enough to know that's true? Can you trust Him to be good enough to make such a difficult decision, which seems tragic to us, might actually be the best possible outcome? This is the ultimate end of the story of Job. Job reconciled with the fact the God is greater than he understood Him to be.
I pray that God leads you in this understanding and the He might be glorified by it. May He bless you "that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your heart through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
"Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us,to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen." (Ephesians 3:16-21)
Thank you for this most human and revealing piece! About issues we all wrestle with. Heaven has to be, as Paul said from prison so infinitely above our experience.
I posted your Substack to my Facebook because I’ve both met and heard pastors who seem like purists in that near-death-experiences or much of anything supernatural occurring today seem below them, or somehow contradict the Bible: they feel they are superior in needing only the words of the Bible; no manifestations from the God who wrote it… MY POST:
“A lady astrophysicist from Brittish Columbia, Canada, wrestles with the senseless “trans” (deluded man,) shooting, of one of the Canadian victims who holds onto life despite 3 bullet wounds to her head and neck…
She takes comfort from Near Dearh Experience books like “Heaven is Real,” which she discovered after her own daughter died; —and which add to her faith in God, and don’t reduce her faith. As well these accounts should, since many conjecture that Paul, Apostle, writer of half the New Testament himself, saw Heaven, and the third level of heaven, in a NDE… (AFTER the recorded stoning of Paul to death, and left to die, in the book of Acts)…
The book “Life After Life” increased my faith right AFTER I prayed to receive Christ; with its similar near-death experiences; I found the book in the Madison, WI public library, and rode there daily on a bike, to finish it: (I didn’t have a library card!)
The Lord saw fit, soon after I read that book, to let me meet the happiest lady-in-a- wheelchair ever: who saw Jesus after a stroke which left medical personnel thining she was a vegetable, until she communicated with nursing home staff with her eyes. Her husband had left with her 6 children.
When I met her, she had recovered to the point she could type, —and stand briefly with leg braces. It took me an hour juae to hear her testimony; her voice had been affected by the stroke. She attended camps for young people with Muscular Dystrophe, as an honorary member —and though raises Catholic was in protestant “Women Aglow for Christ.” —A story to rival the change in the apostles, after THEY saw the risen Jesus… Additionally, my own physicist father, (who had thanked me for sharing my newfound faith with him but made no commitment) —had a kidney infecton shortly prior to his own death, and told my mother, at his bedside at the hospital, (using typical physiciat lingo) “The walls are PERMEABLE!” (Making me wonder what he might have been seeing…)
I wasn’t a fan of a rebel rock-n-roller band, like Blood, Sweat, and Tears, with its inexplicable & Godless lyrics, in its song from my era, titled “And When I Die,” —in which the lead bellows “🎶🎶I swear there ain’t no Heaven, and I pray there ain’t no hell…!🎶🎶…(What irony: to pray to the very God you just sang to us has lied about Heaven, —hoping that there is no hell?)… But, for some reason, I belived there WAS a hell; —yet, I just felt Heaven might be “too good to be true!”
The documentes stories of those who had claimed they’d seen not only Heaven, & Jesus, —but also things bystanders could not explain them knowing, while clinically dead, INCREASED, (not decreased), my own faith: they amplified what the Bible already said, they didn’t contradict it. Even pets seen in heaven: Solomon, in some kind of funk, said “who knows if the spirit of the animal goes up or not,” but as Isaiah saw, in God’s coming kingdom,
“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;
and a little child shall lead them” Isaiah 11:6.
And, in an era like ours, when both skeptics and false religions claiming infallible scientific knowledge, claim to KNOW that there is no God, on our campuses, He is perfectly willing to lift the veil just a tad, to show they are WRONG. —As he must have done when the ancient fathers of our faith KNEW they would be “gathered to their people” when they died; —and when Daniel, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Zechariah, followed by John, were SHOWN heaven..”
I am a man nearly 80 and a follower of Jesus since age 9. I began early in my walk reading of the Holocaust in Europe and the gulag system of Stalin and the writings of Solzhenitsyn and the sufferings of Christians for their faith for 2000+ years, though honestly I began to read more out of curiosity than trying to learn of suffering as such. That changed with my own life experiences and I tried to understand the 'why'. I studied Christian theology in bible college and seminary. None answered the question of why...the one question that begs for an answer when we are 'in it'.
I lost my wife of 52 years, a Godly, holy woman who suffered the ravages of cancer for 12 years. . . she never complained or blamed God or others. . . I didn't fare so well.
I have navigated some of the sufferings of this broken, dying world only by faith. Nick Cave, the musician who lost his son and nearly his life from the grief of it said "hope is optimism with a broken heart". A sufferer of the Holocaust said, ". . . the Jewish People must wait. (for the Messiah) They must live inside the rhythm of divine time." And from a Christian writer of another era, ". . .in this very moment in Christ we can touch our brethren six or seven thousand miles away. That is a miracle.... This Life is eternal Life; it is timeless; it knows no space; everything is present when Jesus is present." (T Austin-Sparks)
We are in exile as believers in a world the Good God never intended. . . he gave freedom to choose that our love for him might have value. We chose wrong.
We listen because there are no words or answers. We look at those struggling to hold on to faith, being with those who suffer is what the Lord Jesus uses to carry them through to a better day and somehow, ironically that is the way we survive it.
The Lord bless and strengthen you Sarah. I agree with you in prayer for this precious child and her family and the others.
Mark
Thank you. I'm so sorry you lost your wife and that she suffered so.
Sarah, praying for Maya and for you. For healing, for comfort, for continued and strengthened faith.
Sarah! Its so good to see you again! I haven’t seen you in my TL for a long time and thought maybe you’d dropped off of Substack. So glad you’re still here…
I did step back for a while—I was utterly exhausted and also trying to finish my book manuscript. But I'm (sort of) back.
Hope you got your book done (ish)…When you’re ready want to hear more…
I did - it's finally been submitted to the publisher.
Excellent! Keep us apprised of a publishing date!
The more we love, the more we care, the more exposed we are to hurt. Just remember, it's worth it.
I was tearing up reading through this essay and thinking about what's at stake. To think that Jesus willingly joined mankind in this pain and sorrow is mind boggling.
Sarah, I am praying fiercely for you, Maya, her family, and all those who are touched by her story. John Piper, at the website Desiring God, teaches so eloquently on how to reconcile doctrine of suffering and sovereignty. There was a recent article on His website titled The Power of Hoping In God's Meticulous Providence which I have found extremely helpful with this wrestle you are presently engaged in.
Whenever I have found myself in a position of feeling anxious, fearful, distracted by evil and this world, I find the ultimate source is my understanding of who God is is far too small. The reality is He's so much bigger than I can imagine. You already know He's big enough to have stopped the tragedy, but do you believe He could be big enough to have caused the tragedy because it was the best possible thing to have happened? Can you trust Him to be big enough to know that's true? Can you trust Him to be good enough to make such a difficult decision, which seems tragic to us, might actually be the best possible outcome? This is the ultimate end of the story of Job. Job reconciled with the fact the God is greater than he understood Him to be.
I pray that God leads you in this understanding and the He might be glorified by it. May He bless you "that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your heart through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
"Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us,to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen." (Ephesians 3:16-21)
Ephesians 1:16-23 is a good reminder, too.
Big hugs!
Thank you for this most human and revealing piece! About issues we all wrestle with. Heaven has to be, as Paul said from prison so infinitely above our experience.
I posted your Substack to my Facebook because I’ve both met and heard pastors who seem like purists in that near-death-experiences or much of anything supernatural occurring today seem below them, or somehow contradict the Bible: they feel they are superior in needing only the words of the Bible; no manifestations from the God who wrote it… MY POST:
“A lady astrophysicist from Brittish Columbia, Canada, wrestles with the senseless “trans” (deluded man,) shooting, of one of the Canadian victims who holds onto life despite 3 bullet wounds to her head and neck…
She takes comfort from Near Dearh Experience books like “Heaven is Real,” which she discovered after her own daughter died; —and which add to her faith in God, and don’t reduce her faith. As well these accounts should, since many conjecture that Paul, Apostle, writer of half the New Testament himself, saw Heaven, and the third level of heaven, in a NDE… (AFTER the recorded stoning of Paul to death, and left to die, in the book of Acts)…
The book “Life After Life” increased my faith right AFTER I prayed to receive Christ; with its similar near-death experiences; I found the book in the Madison, WI public library, and rode there daily on a bike, to finish it: (I didn’t have a library card!)
The Lord saw fit, soon after I read that book, to let me meet the happiest lady-in-a- wheelchair ever: who saw Jesus after a stroke which left medical personnel thining she was a vegetable, until she communicated with nursing home staff with her eyes. Her husband had left with her 6 children.
When I met her, she had recovered to the point she could type, —and stand briefly with leg braces. It took me an hour juae to hear her testimony; her voice had been affected by the stroke. She attended camps for young people with Muscular Dystrophe, as an honorary member —and though raises Catholic was in protestant “Women Aglow for Christ.” —A story to rival the change in the apostles, after THEY saw the risen Jesus… Additionally, my own physicist father, (who had thanked me for sharing my newfound faith with him but made no commitment) —had a kidney infecton shortly prior to his own death, and told my mother, at his bedside at the hospital, (using typical physiciat lingo) “The walls are PERMEABLE!” (Making me wonder what he might have been seeing…)
I wasn’t a fan of a rebel rock-n-roller band, like Blood, Sweat, and Tears, with its inexplicable & Godless lyrics, in its song from my era, titled “And When I Die,” —in which the lead bellows “🎶🎶I swear there ain’t no Heaven, and I pray there ain’t no hell…!🎶🎶…(What irony: to pray to the very God you just sang to us has lied about Heaven, —hoping that there is no hell?)… But, for some reason, I belived there WAS a hell; —yet, I just felt Heaven might be “too good to be true!”
The documentes stories of those who had claimed they’d seen not only Heaven, & Jesus, —but also things bystanders could not explain them knowing, while clinically dead, INCREASED, (not decreased), my own faith: they amplified what the Bible already said, they didn’t contradict it. Even pets seen in heaven: Solomon, in some kind of funk, said “who knows if the spirit of the animal goes up or not,” but as Isaiah saw, in God’s coming kingdom,
“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;
and a little child shall lead them” Isaiah 11:6.
And, in an era like ours, when both skeptics and false religions claiming infallible scientific knowledge, claim to KNOW that there is no God, on our campuses, He is perfectly willing to lift the veil just a tad, to show they are WRONG. —As he must have done when the ancient fathers of our faith KNEW they would be “gathered to their people” when they died; —and when Daniel, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Zechariah, followed by John, were SHOWN heaven..”
“The walls are PERMEABLE!” (Making me wonder what he might have been seeing…)
Wow. That is a very physicist way of expressing what might've been a spiritual vision.