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 17th 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 18th:
“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)
