A few years ago, I met a lady who was kind enough to share her story with me. This lady was a strong Christian from a good Baptist family. She was active in church. Many would describe her as a pillar of the church and community in which she lived. Because she knew of my first wife’s death, this new friend was kind enough to talk honestly with me about her grief experience.
This lady’s oldest son had died unexpectedly and tragically. Her son’s death had left her emotionally and spiritually numb, even paralyzed. She never stopped going to church, but it was just going through the motions. She could not pray. She could not worship.
Her son’s death had forced this Christian lady with a strong faith background to re-examine her relationship to God, even re-examine who God is.
Like many others, she had lived in a “cause and effect world.” Do good things and God blesses. Do bad things and God punishes. It is surprising how many people live in a theological world like the one described by Job’s three mistaken friends.
Perhaps it is because believing in a cause and effect world makes us powerful that this teaching is so seductive. It allows us to control God. We can put God in our debt just by the way we live. We can live by understanding instead of living by faith.
More than once, I have heard the story of how God caused a terrible tragedy to befall someone’s family member in order to get the attention of another. Perhaps you have heard such stories, too. Details change but the story is always the same.
It is amazing how important the person telling the story views himself or herself. “I am so important,” he or she reasons, “that God did something terrible to someone else just to speak to me. God turned that person into a ‘thing’ to be used in order to speak to me. God loves me more than He loves that person.”
Such a view certainly makes some people feel important and powerful. It also can make one feel guilty. If something bad happens to someone, then are we responsible? That is the inevitable question.
If we are responsible, then we are guilty. Does the accident or disease or death mean God is against us?
Such a position also raises questions about God. Is He a loving God toward all or only toward some? What is the nature of God anyway?
These are not abstract philosophical questions. These are questions that grieving people ask. Is God for me or against me? Others ask similar questions during life’s journey.
At the time we met, it had been three years since this lady’s son had died. She told me that during the entire first year, she had been the injured person whom friends “carried to Jesus.”
You remember the story recorded in Mark 2:1–12 and Luke 5:17–26. A paralyzed man’s only hope for healing was to be taken to Jesus. Thankfully the man had four friends who cared enough for him that they went out of their way to make sure he got to Jesus.
Most of us remember the story of the four friends taking off the roof of the house in Capernaum where Jesus was teaching. We remember the friends had to be innovative in their solution, persistent in their efforts and compassionate in their care.
The result was wholeness for their paralyzed friend that exceeded anything they had anticipated. Not only did their friend walk from that house with his mat rolled up under his arm but he also left with his sins forgiven. For the first time in his life, the man understood that God was not against him. He was not guilty. The man walked through the door of the home he had entered from above as whole spiritually as he was physically.
This dear Christian lady described how friends had “carried her to Jesus” month after month. They allowed her to grieve rather than urging her to “get on with life.” They listened to her tell her story over and over again. They talked to her, asked her questions, challenged her but with great sensitivity.
These friends encouraged her. They included her. They forced her to participate in activities even despite her protests. Sometimes these friends simply did things for her when they saw her grief was too heavy. They helped her learn to find what I call “a new sense of balance.” One never heals from the death of a loved one. One never “gets over it.” One just learns a new sense of balance that allows him or her to live with the open wound.
The lady’s journey toward God was not complete the day we met. That is a lifelong trip for all of us. But she was beginning to accept the mystery of God. No one can adequately explain the nature of God. But she told me she knew God loved her all the time and in all situations.
She knew that God loved her son as much as He loved her. She understood our world is corrupted by sin and groans for redemption just as humanity does (Rom. 8:20–21). That is part of the reason bad things happen to good people.
This lady’s friends did not leave her alone. They did not force her to act as they wanted her to act. Her friends helped cut her burdens in half by being there to help carry them. They caused her joys to multiply by sharing them. Her friends loved her and carried her to Jesus. In their love, she could see His love until she could once again joy over the love of God poured out for all people through Jesus and His death on Calvary’s cross.
How fortunate this lady was to have such friends. At the feet of Jesus, she found her new sense of balance. Today she uses her experience to help others walking the grief journey. Not everyone is so blessed. Many come face to face with death or disappointment and walk away from God. How tragic.
May God bless us all with friends who care enough about us to carry us to Jesus when life’s circumstances leave us paralyzed and unable to get there by ourselves.
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