TGIF

“Everything happens for a reason”.

‘Everything that happens to you is for your good and God’s glory”.

“God never gives you more than you can handle”.

I have heard and (regrettably) taught all of these spiritual canards for most of my believing life.

They are basically lies with just enough plausible truth to make them believable.

They carry a false sense of certainty that we find comforting.

We want to believe them because they help us make sense of life in a fallen world…as long as we don’t think too long or deeply about them.

In the last week and a half my mom has had a heart attack that she barely survived followed by a stroke that left her voiceless and immobile.

She is too affected by dementia to understand any of it.

She is refusing food and medication as well as the tepid ministrations of the facility she is in.

Before all of this she suffered as dementia took her mind and took her away from all she loved…her home and her cat.

She’s rather die…so she will.

Now…if you think there is some hidden spiritual reason for this, that in some way what my mother is experiencing is for “her good” and that God is somehow glorified by by the utter dismantling of a a person’s mind and life…you are worshipping a God I do not know and don’t care to.

God is not sitting on the throne carefully dispensing just the right amount of trials and tragedies to make us what He wants us to be…being careful not to exceed our limitations to endure them.

The reality is that we live in a fallen world where bad stuff happens and death is inevitable.

Evil has no capacity for reason.

Jesus doesn’t cause people to suffer, nor is He glorified by tragedy and pain.

Life sometimes exceeds our ability to cope with it all…He promises to be present in the pain…He doesn’t promise to end it.

Yet.

In the midst of suffering …sometimes…we will see the kingdom break in.

We will see it in the love of our friends, our family, our pets…who want to see us flourish.

We may find it in a meal or a place when we feel inexplicable joy.

Those things are signposts of what is to come…the suffering is a signpost of what will be left behind.

They are also directional signs that point to life …or death.

We choose which one to follow…

I’ve seen a glimpse of the kingdom to come.

I choose life while living in the land of death.

That way…some of the kingdom is here already…

Make your own application…