O Death, Where is Thy Sting?

A few days ago I returned from a memorial service for a friend’s first born baby girl who died very late in labor. The exceptionally strange thing is that the dad’s best friend, a guy who I dated for a summer in 2005, just lost his first born girl a week or two before Shoshana was born, also very late in labor. To top it off, this dad also just lost a childhood friend to a river during the last heat wave. I expected to cry a bit at the memorial because of the injustice of it all, but I it turns out that I cried for a very different reason.

To understand how important this story is to me, I have to start at the beginning. You see, life has been such a series of roller coasters in the last few years that I had gotten very bitter toward God for the injustices in my life. Why was I entitled to so many tough “life lessons” so early? After one or two I felt my relationship with my Heavenly Father grow to the point where we could have two-way conversations. But after back to back life lessons for several years now, I got tired of it all. Who did God think I was? Paul, Peter, John the Baptist… Job? Over time I became more and more tormented. My landline with God slowly deteriorated and was finally cut. The communication satellite was blown to smithereens. The Postal Service went out of business. Finally, even my typewriter was smashed with a sledgehammer to the sound of gleeful cackling. Once again, my best friend didn’t want to talk to me. I was alone, abandoned. The sky relinquished its existence to an ever shrinking black box.

I was in such despair that even my relationship with my husband was seriously affected. The tormenting spirits came very close to winning the battle on multiple occasions. I was just so sick and tired of going from one trial to another that I was ready to quit life. Literally. Needless to say, I didn’t. I’m still here and kicking. But not because I accepted that God was somehow good even though life sucked, nor because I learned why these things had been allowed in my life, but because I recognized that I had gotten sucked in to the prevailing Christian teachings today; that life was supposed to be easy. I was entitled to a good life. Too bad that it is a lie. This life is the hard part and after it is the good part. This is hard work, later is retirement. Based on that I was finally willing to repent for my rebellion and fight with Him for control. (If you don’t already know, I am a bit of a control freak. I’ve figured out that that is why I hate roller coasters. They terrify me because I’m out of control.)

I am fully convinced that if my relationship with God hadn’t been restored a few weeks ago I would not have learned the lessons that I did this week.

The reason I have suddenly become willing to write such a damning self-expose is because I want to share the nature of God that he revealed to me a few days ago. You see, for the second time in my life, the Holy Spirit allowed me to feel what he felt. In that room, surrounded by muted conversations, hugs, and a few tears, I felt the Holy Spirit himself, mourning. He was so tangible I could almost see him. His arms were opened wide, welcoming the childless parents like the perfect comforter; like the best friend that knows that words aren’t enough at this time. Only silent, tearful companionship was necessary at this time.

Does it strike you as strange that the Holy Spirit would mourn with us in loss, even though the Heavenly Father has ultimate control over life and death? It seemed strange to me for a few moments even though this nature of God is known as "the Comforter." That is, until I remembered that there was no death in the Garden of Eden. The most painful thing known to mankind was not God’s invention. Death was part of the curse brought into our world by the cunning of Satan himself. This may seem elementary to some but I had forgotten some key principles of God’s character in my bitterness and anger. I mark the beginning or the most difficult times in my life with the death of my best friend when I was 14. Over time I allowed my understanding of God to morph until he was almost Zeus-like. Omnipotent but detached. Caring, but willing to put us through hell for “our own good.” Sometimes I even thought of him as capricious. I definitely thought of God as responsible for unbelievable pain instead of protecting us from he who doesn’t simply wish to inflict pain, but to utterly destroy us.

What is more, God personally experienced loss. Yes. He lost his first born child. Not only did he lose Jesus to death, he lost him to damnation. Not only did Jesus die on the cross, all the sin of the world was heaped on him. Why? Because he was blameless. I think Aslan can explain it best: “It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward (C.S. Lewis. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe).”

“His grace is sufficient (2 Cor. 12:9)” not because he is magnanimously capable of meting out grace for us poor, shortsighted people who need a little extra help to bear our difficult existence, but because he knows what we’re going through. He went through it. He knows how much grace we need to mourn, recover, and move on. He even knows how much grace we need to rejoice in our sufferings (1 Pet. 4:12-13).

I understand better now. Not perfectly, but better.