“They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the One who sent me.” John 15:21
Painting displayed in the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio
In the West we currently enjoy religious freedom, and take for granted the ability to meet with other believers to pray and worship together. This freedom is not enjoyed by many brothers and sisters around the world, such as in China or in the United Arab Emirates. For instance, Christians in North Korea are tortured for their faith. Chinese believers from the house churches were barred from traveling to Lausanne III in 2010, the largest Christian gathering in history. Or in the UAE, Christian expatriates are allowed to worship in their own churches, but legally may not share their faith with locals.
This section of John’s gospel must provide precious sustenance to these believers. They are misunderstood, misaligned, maltreated, and perhaps even tortured or killed because of the name of Jesus. But they can cling to the promise that God’s Holy Spirit is with them, purifying them and speaking through them.
What can we learn from the suffering church? Many things, no doubt, but one that stands out is the strength of their commitment. Can we too live as though our whole lives depend on our belief and trust in God? Do we focus on the essentials of our faith and let the minor concerns drop? Do we believe in the power of God to bring real change and renewal?
May the example of the persecuted church inspire and convict us this day.
Prayer: Lord Jesus, you were persecuted, and so are many around the world. Redeem their suffering for your glory.
These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect. (Hebrews 11:32–40)
Suffering because of skin color. A statue to commemorate the people sold as slaves in Zanzibar, at what is now an Anglican Cathedral but used to be the site of a slave market.
The writer to the Hebrews wraps up his discussion of the heroes of faith in this hodgepodge list of people, triumphs, and tragedies. Through faith they did some amazing feats, such as shutting the mouths of lions and quenching the fury of flames. But they also faced torture, chains, imprisonment, persecution, and mistreatment. And horrible deaths: by stoning, being sawn in two, by the sword.
Not exactly a list of experiences we’re eager to embrace. Nor to advertise to people who are curious about the Christian faith. “Yes, become a Christian and you too could endure ridicule and maltreatment!” Sometimes instead we highlight only the amazing promises of God – that he will never leave us, that when we walk through the river the waves will not submerge us, that he loves us with an everlasting love.
But because we live in a fallen world, which is not as God intended it, we may experience house fires and breast cancer. We may lose our jobs or our spouses to a roving eye and hand. God doesn’t cause these horrible experiences, but he allows them. Why? We just don’t know. At these times, perhaps more than ever, we need to cling to God’s faith-building promises while sinking back into his everlasting arms. And to know that God has something better for us planned, such as our home in heaven.
None of these heroes – Abraham and Moses nor Gideon and David – received what they had been promised. But they welcomed it from a distance. May we who have the gift of the triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – live in a manner worthy of our callings. May God increase in us our faith, that we too may be heroes who welcome God’s promises, perhaps also at a distance.
For prayer and reflection: “God wants you to understand that it is a life of faith, not a life of emotional enjoyment of his blessings…. Faith by its very nature must be tested and true.” Oswald Chambers
A couple of weeks ago I posted about my family’s near accident, giving thanks that they walked away unscathed. The post has been in the back of my mind as I think about mothers losing children through car accidents or disease; about sisters living life without their brothers; about families disrupted from a cycle of seemingly neverending surgeries. Just last night I heard about a friend who seems to be following Job’s journey rather too closely lately. Battles at his church left him bruised but not broken; disease left him scarred but not out for the count; now there’s another ghastly wrinkle I don’t even want to hint at it. Why, God?
It just doesn’t seem fair. Sometimes we witness what appears to be a miracle of saving grace, but at other times the split second matters and life changes in an instant, ushering in tears, anguish, questions, and pain. Does God intervene in the one instant yet hold back his hand at the other? If we say that he’s involved in those miracles, does that mean he’s also involved in the accidents and disease and personal losses?
I saw a friend over the summer whose sibling died a few months ago, in the prime of her life. When I questioned him whether he asks the “why” questions, he said he didn’t. He believes in the fall of the world, and so why are we surprised when bad stuff happens? The world is not as God made it; sin entered in and so people die and governments are corrupt and people fail each other and lie, cheat, and steal.
I believe that, but if it was my sister dying, I’m guessing I would ask why. Yet I think of another friend whose spouse and child died in the space of a decade, and who faced/faces physical challenges with another child. When talking about her journey and God, she said, “Where else do I have to go but to him?”
That comment made me stop and ponder.
One who thought about the why’s and why nots died a decade ago, Rob Lacey. I still miss him. I called him my “dream author,” for he delivered great content on time that sold. And he was just such fun to work with (on The Word on the Street and The Liberator). We talked about his next book as “the health story.” But we didn’t know then that his wife Sandra and friend Steve would be writing it after he went to perform in glory.
Rob with his lovely colleague Elin Kelly, signing books at Spring Harvest, 2004
Rob’s poem “Why Me?” comes on page 196 of their book, People Like Us, and I include it here with Sandra Harnisch-Lacey’s gracious permission. He wrote it after he had an all-clear of no cancer in October 2002. (None of us knew that the cancer would come back three years later.)
Why Me?
Thanks, Emmanuel. Thank God with us. I’m well!
But why me? Not him? Why me? Not them?
It’s not ’cos I memorised the whole of Job.
O wore an anointed prayer shawl.
Or a special hospital robe.
It’s not ’cos we cried ‘Mercy’! a million times.
It’s not ’cos I wrote a hundred prayers with rhymes.
It’s not ’cos my wife deserves me.
Puts the sign ‘reserved’ on me.
It’s not ’cos my son needs me.
Twin tower workers were parents too.
It’s not ’cos we’ve hung on.
It’s just that God pulled us through.
So is it ‘because I’m worth it’?
Well, I am, I’m worth everything to God.
But so was Jacqueline du Pré,
So was Eva Cassidy.
So why? And when?
Was it already planned right back then?
Or did God shuffle and shift?
And watch all our prayers lift up past his eyes?
And did he hear our cries?
And did they all add up to Abraham- or Moses-size?
When they dared to do diplomacy with God?
Did we, together, negotiate with God?
We’ll never see the subplots,
The alternative scenes,
Until we get to heaven, read the script
And work out what it means.
There’s no recipe for what God gives free.
There’s no ace to play for grace.
It’s not that I toughed it out with cameras up my nether regions,
Tubes pushed through my back,
Needles in my failing veins,
Platinum pumped through every track.
It’s none of that.
It’s not that I kept a certain attitude,
When interviewed.
I’m no more clued than you.
I could’ve interceded for the lion with my name on it,
Been compliant with my giant.
I could’ve driven into Jerusalem on a clapped-out Robin Reliant.
And still, it might have been,
That I would die.
And we might have no idea why.
Would that have been God’s will?
Or is it God’s plan never to fill an empty grave?
Or does He save each one of us?
So how come some still die?
And why this?
Why that?
And with answers so shy
What’s the point in asking ‘why’?
So I won’t try to work out why.
I won’t sweat to work it through.
For now, Rob, just face it,
God’s mercy is focused down on you.
So leave your questions lying there
You might pick them up again.
Leave your lopsided, left heavy, rational, rigorous brain
Just give God his fame.
The always different, ever the same.
Live up your voice and yell…
Thank Emmanuel, thank God with us. I’m well.
Rob Lacey, October 2002
With Rob, I’ll put the “why’s” aside and focus on God’s great mercy, which he pours out on our lives, day by day. Sometimes he allows bad stuff to happen, but he never stops loving us or rooting for us.
With Rob, I’ll give God his fame, the One who is always different but ever the same.
By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” (Hebrews 11:13–19)
A cross from Canterbury Cathedral, marking the spot where Thomas Becket was murdered. Makes me wonder what sort of implement Abraham held over Isaac. His son was saved, but the Father God’s was not.
Our passage in Hebrews doesn’t gloss over the challenges that the heroes of the faith endured. One of the most moving is Abraham’s test in relinquishing his firstborn son, Isaac. Here God seems to be asking the impossible of Abraham – to sacrifice what Abraham thought fulfilled God’s promises. Abraham couldn’t conceive of how God would rectify matters, but went ahead in building the altar and arranging the wood, and even in binding up Isaac. What fear father and son must have felt when Abraham drew back his knife in obedience.
But God didn’t make Abraham follow through, promising instead that Abraham would have as many descendents as the stars in the sky or the sand on the seashore. By faith Abraham passed God’s test, having followed God for many years. He had learned how to obey God’s instructions, even when he didn’t understand why or how God would make things right.
What about us? Have we learned how to discern God’s voice that we might obey with a willing heart, like Abraham did? What’s our greatest point of need? We might be praying for a wayward child. We might long to marry or have children or grandchildren. We might yearn for some strong and healthy friendships. We might be hoping for a home that will bring peace and refreshment to our family and visitors. We might be seeking paid employment that employs our passions and our gifts.
In all these things God wants to meet our needs, “according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19). He might test us to hone our listening skills, that we may hear his voice more clearly. But he will never fail us – he who sacrificed his only son that we might live.
Father God, you didn’t stop your son being slain on the altar, a worthy sacrifice for our sins. Thank you.
Yesterday my husband and kids were meeting me at my parents’ home for dinner. They arrived in a jumble, the story spilling out of my children in fragments before Nicholas was able to park the car and come into the house:
PyelotSon: “An idiot/jerk almost hit us!” he said with a nervous giggle. (Sidenote: Yes, he’s picked up those derogatory terms from a couple of my times at the wheel.)
CutiePyeGirl: “We almost crashed!”
The chatter continued, and it took us some unraveling to figure out the chain of events when Nicholas walked in a moment later, shaking with adrenaline. He filled in the details in rapid succession: They were driving along the straight stretch before turning into my parents’ driveway when an oncoming car drifted into their lane. Nicholas honked (UK: hooted) the horn and the probable-young-person-who-was-texting reacted quickly, because he or she drove around my family – he/she moved onto the sidewalk/grass on the passenger’s side of my family’s borrowed van – to avert a head-on collision.
In this instance, we were saved. We were mercifully and miraculously saved from what could have been a life-taking or life-altering crash. I have my family intact, and the thought has kept me from sleeping as I recount the what-if’s, thinking about hospitals or funeral homes and write-offs of borrowed vehicles.
But we aren’t always kept from harm in this fallen world, for every day some form of sin, disease, or injustice seeps into our lives. I don’t know why God cushioned my family yesterday when other families lose sons and daughters, wives and husbands, mothers and fathers to accidents or cancer or abuse. But I’m grateful. I give thanks, mindful of the fragility of life, when a second can change everything.
Today I return thanks to God for saving me and mine. I want to be like the leper who returned to thank Jesus for healing him. The gift of the present moment feels all the more precious, the morning after the night before that didn’t change our lives forever.
My niece is turning 20 soon, that wonderful decade of exploring identity, building relationships, entering into the world of independence and adulthood. It can be a time of searching and experimentation; a time of solidifying who we are. My smart and hard-working niece has known since she was 10 that she wanted to pursue a career in medicine, but when I was in college, I was a bit lost about what I wanted to do with my life. I knew I like words and writing. And I had enjoyed my dad’s computing, when as kids he would bring home a console and plug it into the phone for it to speak to the mainframe at Pillsbury, where he worked.
Which way to turn? The way ahead, or that little cobbled trail to the right?
So when I was wondering what to pursue at college, he encouraged me to be a technical writer. I signed up for some computer courses – Basic, Pascal, Fortran, and Cobol. I did okay at first, but when I got to Fortran I started to struggle. I went to see my professor when I was flailing around with the latest assignment. His words brought instant clarity: “You know Amy, I don’t think that writing code is something you really want to be doing in your free time.”
He was right, and I felt relief in dropping the computer-science minor. But I don’t regret the classes in Cobol or even my political-science major that I later embraced. I find it funny that I studied poli sci, for I’m not a news junky or a politico (as my husband, who has these proclivities, will fully attest). But God used and redeemed my choices of studies at college – my political-science major meant that I went to Washington, DC, for a semester, which turned into ten years of amazing, challenging, eye-opening experiences. My internship including working for a fabulous British Christian writer. Who knew I would later live in Britain, writing and working in Christian publishing?
So to those such as my niece who are moving into the next stage of life, I offer you blessings from a fellow pilgrim. Whether you have your path charted out or whether you aren’t sure which way to turn, may you feel freedom in taking the next step. May you feel the Father’s hand in yours, never constricting but always encouraging. May you experience joy in the journey.
If you’re well past your twenties, let me ask you this: How did your experiences of that decade shape your life?
“There’s a new company that’s selling books on the Internet. It’s one to watch,” said the man who would become the Motley Fool.
The year was 1993, and I was sitting in his living room, having enjoyed a bountiful feast made by his wife, with whom I was working on a project on the Classics. Being in my twenties and not thinking I should actually invest any of the disposable income that I had (which was more than I realized, of course), I let the advice roll by. Yep, you can guess the name of that company.
What would you tell your 20-year-old self, if you’re in your forties or higher? I posed the question on my Facebook wall yesterday, and got a mixture of funny and poignant responses.
Stripes on top and on the bottom?
Chose your life partner carefully
One of my friends wrote, “Don’t marry that guy. God gave you good instincts for a reason” and my heart went out to her. In my twenties I was saved from such a union, which surely would have ended in divorce – as much as I would strive to avoid divorce. I knew deep down that things weren’t right with us, but it took strong advice from my parents and my work colleagues for me to end the engagement. It seems once a couple is engaged, they are swept along in a current of planning and living, perhaps, on a realm of unreality. Well-meaning acquaintances ask, “When’s the wedding?” The woman in particular looks into tulle, beads, canapés, and flowers. That’s why my husband and I, when we help couples who are preparing to marry, counsel them to do the hard work of marriage preparation before the engagement. Then ending the relationship, if it isn’t right, isn’t such a public announcement. And the couple isn’t distracted by wedding planning.
I remember so clearly the advice given to me by one of my colleagues when I was engaged to the wrong man. He held his hands out, palms facing each other and about six inches apart. “Two people are like this,” he said. “When they marry, just by the sheer force of becoming married, they become like this,” he said, moving his hands about 12 inches apart. I was beginning to see that marriage wasn’t going to solve the core issues that my fiancé and I had, but would only exacerbate them. It took me several more months, but finally I ended the engagement. And several years later (thank you God) met the right guy.
God will redeem your brokenness
Another friend wrote, “Sometimes the hardest adjustments you will have to make will be the ones that end up giving you the most compassion for others – so try not to resent them so much. ” Again, wonderful advice. I’ve seen this so often in my life, how the things that feel so hard and excruciating and painful can be used by God in surprising ways.
Kara’s cabin. Epic.
Not to say that I welcomed, for instance, my close friend dying in a car crash when we were 19. But now I can see how all these years later, that core group of high-school friends has remained much closer than we probably would have had Sue not died. We go on trips together and those who live in the Twin Cities in Minnesota see each other regularly. Of course we’re not perfect and sometimes we have hurts to forgive and feelings to mend. But I would be a much poorer person without them in my life.
My parents just recounted how the day after their 50th wedding anniversary, they were called to comfort a grieving mother who had just lost her 20-year-old son to suicide. She said, “I wish I would have had parents like you growing up!” Their compassion has blossomed and multiplied over the years of challenges they faced (as I wrote in my blog). God redeems.
You are not fat!
One of my Facebook friends said this, and I totally agree. Ah, to have been able to love my body in my twenties and earlier, when I may not have been stick thin like some of my friends but wasn’t nearly the size I thought in my head. And to have that wonderful skin – now I would tell my 20-year-old self for sure to slather on the sunscreen and ban baby oil while tanning. Or better yet, stay out of the sun all together!
Yes, it’s Pac-Man, and yes, it was the 80s. See advice, “Don’t take yourself so seriously.”
The deeper issue is accepting how we’ve been made – our body shape, size, and features. I’m not sure if my positive reinforcement of my daughter’s beautiful body can speak over the din of society and her peers as she grows up (she’s six), but I’m going to try. We are beautifully and wonderfully made, something I think about when I read Melanie Reid’s moving Spinal Column, in which she tells about her life following breaking her neck and back when she fell from a horse. My thighs might be bigger than I would like, but they are strong and I can run and jump and walk. As Liz Curtis Higgs said when I heard her speak last week, we should wake up each morning and to the mirror say, “Ta-da!” For we are created in God’s image and are therefore gorgeous.
You can do it!
What else would I tell my younger self? A few random remarks:
Don’t take yourself so seriously.
Your worth is not allied to what you accomplish.
Write! You can do it!
Your sister will become one of your closest friends.
Would you please stop fretting over guys?
Lose the shoulder pads. It’s really not a good look for you.
Adventures await.
So what would you tell your 20-year-old self? Here’s a selection from my friends:
What are you so afraid of? Don’t be. What are you so proud of? Don’t be.
God wants you to rest, shrug off your mistakes, forgive yourself, and laugh a lot.
Don’t worry so much about the future or about what others think of you. Listen to God. The only thing certain is that things will not turn out how you expect!
You are not really busy until you have kids. So enjoy your adulthood pre-kids and do lots of late-night activities and fun travel.
Some of the high-school friends after finishing the London MoonWalk in May 2011.
Some of my closest friendships were forged in the fire of grief. When I was nineteen, I arrived home late from a classical concert. Wondering why the light was on downstairs, I went down and was surprised to see my mom. Her eyes were red from crying and I immediately said, “Did Grandpa die?”
“No,” she said, “It’s Sue. She was killed in a car accident.”
In a flash, my world was changed forever. I started screaming out, “Why? Why? Why?” My mom tried to comfort me, but I was in shock. Coming to terms with why God would allow one of my closest high-school friends die so young, with so much life in front of her, would consume me in the days and years to come.
Why does God allow suffering? I haven’t found easy answers, and no doubt never will know fully this side of heaven. But as I queried theologians and wise friends in the faith, I saw that I had to go back to Genesis 3 and the Fall, when Adam and Eve followed the crafty serpent and disobeyed God. With this act, the world was altered and sin entered in. Now bad things would happen to good people. People would die in car accidents and from disease. Unjust rulers would steal from their subjects. Hurricanes and earthquakes would wipe out thousands. Our world is fractured.
But God hasn’t given us up for lost. In his most gracious act, he gave us his son to pay the price for that first act of sin and disobedience. He is ushering in a new kingdom and a new earth. He is redeeming what was lost.
The tragedy of the death of Sue Weavers that night in October 1986 was huge for me and my circle of high-school friends. In our grief we turned to each other, trying to make sense of the gaping hole in our lives. We met up, sometimes laughing and sometimes crying. Over the years the friendships have lasted. Indeed, one of us commented recently that her friend noticed a deep graciousness between us. Borne out of suffering and pain, no doubt.
Two summers ago our friendship witnessed a new level of grief – the pain of a mother whose son, at twenty, was killed in a car accident. It seems surreal that one of us can now say to her son’s friends that she knows what they are feeling. That she has endured the early loss of a friend and mate. That she prays they will find hope in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And that their friendships will last and deepen and bear the fruit that ours have in the years after Sue’s untimely death.
In this life we will have trouble – so said Jesus to his disciples (John 16:33). But as he says, in him we will have peace as well. I so wish Sue hadn’t died in Duluth, Minnesota, all those years ago. But I’m forever grateful for my circle of friends who would jump off Tower Bridge if I asked.
How about you? Can you think of some of your favorite friends? How have they made an impact in your life? Comment below – I’d love to hear.
