God is God and We are Not: Grace, Grief and Good Things

My dear friend said goodbye to her baby today, long before getting to say hello. 

It is a heartbreak. 

Not the first, not likely the last, not even the 'worst kind' as if these things can be plotted on some spectrum of sorrow, but a heartbreak still, deeply felt, a terrible ache for this loved and anticipated little person and the joys that might have been. 

But my friend is wise and she entrusts herself to God, not only when life goes according to plan, but more importantly when it stands in stark and painful contrast to her deepest longings. I heard God's grace in her voice today, I heard Him sustaining her, and I gave thanks.

How blessed is the one who has made the LORD his trust,

She is a blessed woman. In her wisdom she has pursued a life of willing obedience to Christ. She has seen the many wonders God has done for her and the innumerable gifts she has been given. She has acknowledged His provision in the big and little things, and pondered them in her heart. She has believed His Word, and asks together with Job: "Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?” An account that is full of gratitude can be drawn from deeply during adversity. It is with much practice that she trusts the Lord in this thing she would never have chosen.

And has not turned to the proud,

Death is a part of this life, and as with the rest of it, even here there are temptations. One is to reduce these events down to dry medical conclusions that provide a worldly sense and logic to ease the mind. But the workings of the womb are a mystery, and only One understands all that happens there. Though 'cutting edge' technology probes more deeply and provides clearer images each passing year, though the establishment boasts about their knowledge and the details they believe they understand, there are tenfold as many things they do not know. It is smoke and mirrors. A diversion. Ask them. They do not know how or why. "These things just happen." they will say.

 nor to those who lapse into falsehood.

Psalm 40:4

And there is another temptation as well, and that is to believe what is false about God. Some will say that He did not want this to happen, and in the sense that all the sin that affects us breaks His heart it is true, but in the sense that He was powerless to intervene it is a lie. He could have. Sometimes He does. This time He did not. Is it random? No, as with everything He does, it is with purpose. Is it sadistic? No, it is out of His love and goodness. Do we understand it? Rarely. So He just does not care? Another lie laid bare by the death of Christ for us. My friend understands that God is God and we are not, a conflict for those who do not believe and a place to rest for those who do.

Many, O LORD my God,

are the wonders which You have done,

And Your thoughts toward us;

There is none to compare with You.

If I would declare and speak of them,

They would be too numerous to count.

Psalm 40:5

And lastly some will say that He simply is not and this is the proof. He does not trouble to answer them. Why should He? Instead He astounds us with beauty in our world that takes our breath away and in an outpouring of compassion gives us yet another breath to draw. 

We are because He is.

My friend realizes that eventually every breath will be silenced for a time. And God knows that someday we will all understand completely, and until then he can let the enemy of our souls have temporal victories, knowing they are empty because the real battle is already won. 

We are not forsaken.

You, O LORD, will not withhold Your compassion from me; 

Your lovingkindness and Your truth will continually preserve me.

Psalm 40:11