cerebral discharge

I’ve spent all week trying to wrap my brain around the concept of loss.

I posted previously here and here about my friend Joel, who has been fighting a war against Lymphoma this past year or two. Joel died last weekend after a couple of infections attacked his weakened body.

I won’t try to encapsulate my feelings entirely in this post, as I haven’t even taken the time to truly feel them yet. The day before Joel’s passing, when I heard he was doing poorly, I held my wife and just wept for him. I had intended to visit him that very weekend, since Amy and I had the opportunity to travel to Indiana, and I was just a day too late to see him one last time. But since that day, I haven’t been able to find the strength to open my feelings to what was happening. The next morning, when I awoke to a text message from a mutual friend letting me know that he had just heard of Joel’s passing, I instantly went into a bit of a shell where I insulated my heart from really thinking about what had happened.

This is the third death that Amy and I have been connected with in the last 15 months or so. My aunt Paula passed away last spring after a battle with Pancreatic cancer. Shortly after (or before, my memory is a little fuzzy…), Amy’s great-grandmother died in her late 90s. Up until this last year, I had never really been around death much at all. And all at once, it seems like God is taking life away from people I love.

My heart aches for Joel’s wife Kristen, and the immense sense of loss that must be chewing at her every minute of every day. She is the last person on earth who deserves to lose her spouse this young. And yet, here she is. I’ve never seen such an outpouring of prayer for justice as I was a part of for Joel in the last 18 months. And yet, he is no longer alive.

I’ve come to the conclusion (whether any of you agree or not) that prayer doesn’t change our circumstances whatsoever. There’s not a shred of evidence that if we pray for something, even for something good like the life of a saint, that God will deliver any more often than he would if no one prayed. I don’t believe that there is any difference whatsoever in what we experience, whether we are praying or not.

This was a difficult conclusion to come to.

I was always taught that if you ask, and have faith, you’ll get what you prayed for. And the more righteous you are, the more likely that God will deliver. Being a mathematical mind, I instantly imagined an equation that God keeps up in the sky, and if you plug in the right values for all the variables, out comes a sure bet that God will pull through for you.

I was mistaken.

It’s so easy for me to feel like God let me down. Let Kristen down. Let all of us down. This is an injustice! If anyone on earth deserved life, it was Joel. It was Aunt Paula. It was great-grandma Taylor. Faithful christians don’t have any more of chance of surviving the struggles of this life than the worst of pagans. This is injustice.

Faith, in times like this, is difficult to maintain.

So, if God doesn’t deliver justice in the short-term, then what is he doing? I believe that God is in the business of bringing redemption to his creation right now. Things aren’t as they ought to be, but God will make them right in the end.

When Jesus came to earth, and was killed by the Romans, his mission, like every other pseudo-Messiah springing out of the Jewish tribes, was over, right? It should have been. If he had stayed dead, there is no explanation for Christendom. His disciples expected a messiah to conquer the romans and reign in Jerusalem. Since he died, they had every reason to quit.

But he did not stay dead.

Because God is in the business of redemption, and he started it by resurrecting Jesus. The beginning of the redemption. The kingdom of God was being brought to earth.

Many people think that the mission of a Christian is to take people to heaven. I disagree. I believe the mission of the christian is to bring the kingdom of God to people. To bring redemption to the world. To usher in an era of radical change. All of creation groans for it. We get to bring it.

This world is still broken. It’s so broken that good men suffer. Godly women are robbed of their beloved. The work of redemption isn’t done yet.

The reason I still have hope is because of the continuing work of the church to bring redemption to earth. Enough with all the ridiculous preaching against gay rights, or whatever other pet issue the church gets behind. I call all christians to join with Christ in the redeeming of creation. God’s promise is that Christ will return to earth in some way, and his kingdom will be established forever.

And we have a part to play in that redemption. The setting will be uncomfortable, because our role at this point is in a broken world. We are here in this mess of a planet, in this mess of a society, because our job as the church is to bring redemption to the broken. Every loss we sustain, every pain we endure, and every sorrow we suffer, they are all a part of the brokenness that will one day be taken from us.

This I call to mind, and therefore have hope: Because of God’s great love, we are not consumed. His compassion is new every morning. The Lord will not reject us forever. Though he causes us grief, then he has compassion on us.

Please consider what you can do to be a part of redeeming the world with Christ. If you are doing it, you are a follower of Christ. He said himself “those who are not against us are for us.” Bring redemption to the relationships around you. Bring healing to those who are hurting. In doing this, you will be following Christ.