On Job

After counseling a grieving mother after the tragic loss of her son, I've been reflecting on suffering, loss, and the mystery of evil.  While processing on how to put together any words of comfort for the memorial service this Saturday, I came across this message that I wrote on Job 14.  It was a helpful reflection for me today, so I though I would share.

13 “If only you would hide me in the grave

   and conceal me till your anger has passed!

If only you would set me a time

   and then remember me!

14 If someone dies, will they live again?

   All the days of my hard service

   I will wait for my renewal to come.

~ Job 14:13-14 NIV

            Chris and Stephanie were blessed.  My friend Chris owns and operates their family business that provides a comfortable living for his beautiful wife and family.  They have a three year old son and were just blessed to have another baby boy in March, little Caleb.  As faithful members of their local Christian fellowship, they worshiped, they gave, and they served.  Honest and true; blameless and upright, they are models of genuine Christian character.  Life was full and fulfilling.

            Friday, June 17^th 2011 is a day that they will never forget.  Stephanie went into the baby’s room during his nap to check on him.  What she found a cold, lifeless body.  He wasn’t breathing.  She called 911 and they rushed him to the hospital.  Though the doctors managed to get his little heart pumping blood again, his brain was severely swollen due to the lack of oxygen.  What a sight, to see that fragile little frame hooked to all these tubes and wires and machines.  After hours of immense anguish and prayer, they decided to remove the life support and allow their son, their baby boy to die. 

            Stephanie wrote these words on that hard day:

“Caleb was the picture of perfection the day he was born and the day he died. In between, he was the silliest, happiest little one you could have ever hoped to meet. He was loved dearly by the proudest big brother you've ever known. Even at 3 months old he would laugh just to get us to laugh. We still love him so much and will never stop missing him.”

            In this world you will have trouble.  Jesus never denied the realities of pain and suffering in this world.  He never preached health and wealth or an escapist message that retreats when the road is rough and the going is tough.  No, His is a gospel punctuated by the cross!  In this world you will have trouble.

            Genuine suffering forces us to ask deeper questions.  We’re not satisfied on the surface, not placated by platitudes, but instead we want to pierce the heart, the life, the core of reality.  Job, the embodiment of intense human suffering, wields a verbal pick ax to break through the hard, rocky surface, in search of something real, something true, something stable. 

            He is eaten up by pain and suffering.  Have you ever been there?  His whole perspective is mangled and twisted in the train wreck of his loss.  He proclaims that: “Man wastes away like something rotten, like a garment eaten by moths” (Job 13:28).  Have you ever experienced such intense pain that everything about life seems rotten?  The stench of death and destruction permeate so that even those things that once brought you joy are now empty and void.  Everything is dark. 

            In this world you will have trouble.  What an encouraging message. The truth is that we have all been there on one level or another.  We have all experienced some measure of suffering.  If you haven’t, then just give it a little while and you will.  What we find is that suffering forces us to ask more significant questions.  If someone dies, will they live again? We must go deeper.

            How many of you are cat owners?  Well, I guess I should actually rephrase that, how many of you co-exist with or are owned by a cat?  I’m not making a philosophical statement about the depth of cat people verses dog people, but simply wanted to share a story.  We live with three cats; notice that I didn’t say we owned them.  And I had an enlightening experience with one of them recently. 

Sigmund has lived with us for nearly 10 years and he is the most neurotic little fuzz ball in the bunch.  He is the epitome of that well known phrase, “scaredy cat.”  Yet, for whatever reason, we are attached to that fuzz ball and can’t seem to get rid of him. 

Several weeks ago, shortly after I woke up, my wife, Sara, started asking me if I had seen Siggy.  She couldn’t find him.  Now, we let the cats out in the back yard during the day, but we always bring them in at night.  The truth is they go in and out several times a day, which can get rather annoying.  Between kids and cats, I sometimes feel like an automated door.  With a new baby and taking care of a toddler, and everything else going on in our life right now, neither of us could remember if Siggy came in the night before.  Sara said that she had already looked all over the house, all over the back yard, in the front and even out the back fence.  She even talked to our neighbor and looked in his back yard - nothing.  Siggy was lost.  Now, there was a big tuft of fur on the back of our fence, which was a good indication that he had gotten out.  There was no telling if we would ever see him again.  He was really lost.

The tears began to well up in my wife’s eyes, which was motivation enough for me to drop what I was doing and send out the search party.  I began to search for our lost cat.  Have you ever gone searching for a cat?  I looked all around the outside of our fence, out in the open spaces, and up in the trees.  Right outside of our back fence is a deep drainage ditch.  It is open right there, but a little ways down, it goes underground, into a deep, dark, culvert.  Acting on a hunch, I crawled down into the ditch.  I stuck my head in the pipe and called out, Siggy, Siggy, Siggy…

And then I heard a faint cry from within the cavernous pipe, meow, meow, and could dimly see two glowing eyes deep, down in the dark.  Of course, where else would this cat go than down in the drainage pipe.  I called out, “Come on Siggy, come on.”  You know what happened right?  He came right to me and jumped in my arms.  No, this is a cat we’re talking about.  He cried even louder, but didn’t budge.  He was frozen in fear, even afraid of me his loving owner.  He had gotten himself in that ditch, but he wasn’t going to get himself out.  So, I crawled out and went back to the house and told my wife, “He’s lost.  I couldn’t find him.”  I’m kidding.  I grabbed a flashlight and some treats, whatever I thought might lure him out and went back to the ditch. I shined the light in and called out again, “Here, Siggy, Siggy, Siggy, come on, it’s me. “ Of course, you know what happened, he didn’t budge.  I got out the treats and began to shake the bag calling out louder.  That intrigued him, but he was still frozen in fear.  There was no way He was coming out on his own.  “Great,” I thought, “I going to have to go in after him.” 

I started to climb in that deep, dark pipe, crawling through the muck, and shining the light to show the way.  But, that stupid cat, do you know what he did?  He started going in the opposite direction.  Further into the darkness, deeper into the hole.  He didn’t recognize my voice.  He was afraid of me and kept running away. Nothing I tried could get him to turn around.  So I kept going further in, crawling faster, until I finally caught up with Sigmund.  Scared out of his mind, I got him to turn around and head the other direction.  And I lead him out of the darkness and back into the light of day.  Under the shining morning sun, I brought him home to his loving family. 

Later that day it dawned on me. I realized that I was Sigmund, we were all that dumb cat.  In the bitter night we crawled over the fence and left our loving Father.  We found ourselves out in the cold, lost and scared, so we crept into the ditch and hid in the dark.  He came looking for us, but we were frozen in fear.  He sent His Son who brought a light. He crawled into the ditch, but we kept running the other way, so He went all the way in to the deepest, darkest part.  He went all the way in to death to bring His light so that we might turn around.  He came to cancel the power of sin and death, to lead us back into the light of day and guide our feet home.

If someone dies, will they live again?  We live in a dark world under the shadow of sin and death.  But Christ has brought us victory over sin and death.  Hear what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:

54 When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

 55 “Where, O death, is your victory?

   Where, O death, is your sting?”

 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is what my friend Chris wrote in the early morning hours on June 18^th:           

“March 6th my wife and I were given a blessing, we met Caleb Neel Scheiern. While he came into this world premature he had an incredible personality from the start. Though our hearts are screaming in anguish we take immense comfort in knowing with absolute certainty that Caleb is with our Savior this very day.”

            “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)