Sniffing out the work of God in the world…
A year ago this month, a bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed. Why?
Here are two accounts from well-known Twin Cities ministers — one from a Calvinist and one from a non-Calvinist.
I continue to be puzzled with how one squares Calvinism with the apparent open-endedness of the world (including the choices the Bible calls on us to make) and with the problem of evil.
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Read this amazing conversion story about the author of “Basic Instinct.”
A friend of mine saw an 84-year-old patient and asked her how she was doing. “I’m a bit sad today,” she said. “It’s the anniversary of my daughter’s death.”
He immediately imagined what it must be have been like for her to lose her adult daughter. He wondered if this daughter had her own children and perhaps grandchildren.
“I’m so sorry. How long ago did she pass away?”
“Sixty-two years ago,” the woman replied.
Yes, grief is like that. She’d never forgotten that precious three year old who’d been struck by a disease that today could have been treated routinely.
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“Every Sunday I preach to at least three people who are dying of something. My general rule of thumb is this: any sermon I preach has to be worth the time they are giving to it.” Barbara Brown Taylor
This morning, Diane and I were watching The Today Show when we saw a Malibu homeowner interviewed. As you know, a strong wind spread a fire among several mansions, all estimated between $5,000,000 and $21,000,000.
When they asked him about his loss he replied, “This is nothing. Last year our daughter died. This is nothing.”
We understood perfectly.
Yesterday I had my arthroscopic surgery. That would have been a big deal, but it’s really not. For yesterday my niece lost the baby she was carrying.
Grief — true, deep grief — has a way of putting life in perspective.
(Since many of you were praying for me, let me mention that it seemed to go well. I’m supposed to be off my leg completely for a week . . . and then we’ll see. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers.)
Please pray for me tomorrow (Saturday). I’ll be leaving early to go to Muleshoe, Texas, to do the funeral for a 19-year-old member of Highland whose family lives there.
The Sheets family is an amazing bunch. Kyle and Bernita had ten children. Tyler, whose funeral I’ll be doing, was the sixth.
Highland has remained something of a home base for the Sheets even after all these years. They left when Kyle was about 40 for him to go to medical school in Galveston. He now is a family physician in Muleshoe.
These are incredible kids — full of a passion for Christ. I know of at least one time the whole family went on a mission trip together to Africa.
It will be a blessing — albeit a painful one — to sit with the parents and the nine children tomorrow morning to listen to them talk about their son and brother. Please pray for me to have the composure to speak words of comfort and hope at 3:00 tomorrow afternoon.
Those of you who have a Facebook account can search for him at ACU and see many touching pictures of their family, including several of Tyler with his younger siblings from Tuesday.
When my daughter died, I was given some very wise words a few days later.
Another man who’d lost a child told me that when his son died he made the decision to receive everything as a gift. He decided to accept every comment, no matter how inane or inappropriate, as a gift — as the best that person had to offer at that time.
It’s advice I tried to practice and that I’ve now passed on to so many people.
So many insensitive things are said: “She’s in a better place.” “You must be glad he’s no longer suffering.” “God must have really needed her.”
But they’re usually said by caring, loving people who just don’t know what to say. And in saying SOMETHING, what they’re trying to say is this: “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say. I’d like to comfort you. I want you to know that you matter to me.”
Even if their words are lacking, perhaps even theologically suspect, it’s so helpful to receive the intentions of the heart and to say to yourself, “That’s the best they had to give at this moment.”
Sometimes there just are no words that truly comfort. But a person’s mere presence — an incarnational statement that you won’t have to go through this alone — is great comfort.
On June 16, 1999, tragedy struck our family again. My fun-loving, faith-filled nephew, Jantsen, died suddenly at the age of 15. There was no warning. He went to lift weights with the football team, laid down to rest, and his heart failed him.
Today I’ve asked my brother, Randy Cope, to reflect on these seven years since the death of his son.
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Seven years ago today my life changed forever.
Actually I knew that it had changed the moment the doctor came out of the emergency room and told my wife and me that our 15-year-old son had passed from this life from what we later found out was an undetected heart problem.
I had enjoyed my life up to that point – a healthy family, a good job, and a bright future – but as I stood in the hallway of Freeman Hospital there was no doubt that things would never be the same. Before I left my son’s side that day I prepared myself for a life that resembled a scorched forest after a wild fire. The hillsides filled with lush trees and the valleys filled with wildflowers would now be smoldering ashes.
As the fog lifted so did the reality of what had been lost. Each new act brought new pain – the first trip to the store, the first Sunday at church – even the first time I decided to make oatmeal and had to figure out how to make it for one person, since he and I were the only breakfast eaters in the house.
And such was my life – for a season.
Yet one day, months later, I caught myself whistling. There wasn’t much life in the tune, but it surprised me just the same. As I look back on it now I see that moment as a sign of the renewal that was to follow.
From that first sprig of life has grown not a forest, but a park. I say park because my days are not only filled with life, but an increasing measure of purpose and meaning.
Don’t get me wrong; to call my life a park is not to say that there are no weeds. Our enemy is relentless and is not even above using my grief against me to pull me down from time to time.
Yet as I look back over these last few years I see many wonderful lessons:
• God is creative and lavish in the gifts He sends to bring comfort. He brought friends I hadn’t seen in years, books, music, nature, and even complete strangers to bring healing.
• God taught me not to fear life in the valley. The valley of suffering to me was a place to be avoided at all cost. Now I see that it is strangely a place of peace. God dwells with His suffering people in the valley – in green pastures and beside quiet waters. The Bible reads completely different now that I have this perspective of suffering.
• There is nothing more beautiful than a friend that comes running to help, even when the emotional fallout is intense. Friends like Todd, Warren, Tracy, James, and Cary, who all jumped in to save us – and a brother and sister-in-law who came to sit beside us in silence and later whispered lessons they had learned, having started this journey of grief with their own daughter five years earlier.
• With a treasure of mine now in Heaven I see life much different. It is like studying a Magic Eye drawing and suddenly seeing a beautiful scene in what you once thought was simply a meaningless mess of color.
• With Jantsen on the other bank, the water that separates this life from the next is a brook, not a ragging river – one I am anxious to step over once my work here is done.
I see the work of restoration most in the life of my wife. On that day seven years ago I prepared myself to care for her through the years. I knew she would never recover.
Yet she did.
After a season of intense suffering I watched as our Lord lifted her up – not to her old self but He transformed her into a daughter who has a passion for those that suffer. This new perspective on life has led her to start a ministry that dries the tears and brings smiles to the faces of orphaned children in countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Haiti, and Nicaragua. God also brought her – us – healing through our oldest daughter and our two young ones, whom we met when he led us to them half way around the world.
Some days the pain returns – not the intense “I can’t breath” pain that I remember from the early days, but a heaviness that I guess will be with me all the days of this life. Maybe, however, this heaviness is in some ways a blessing. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “When a loved one dies, God comforts us enough to sustain us, but God leaves enough of the void and enough of the loneliness to help us to anticipate the reunion.”
And so it is, seven years later.
I can’t leave this reflection without thinking of a song by Stephen Curtis Chapman that helped inspire me to get up off the ground and “dive in” to what Got has in store for me:
The long awaited rains
Have fallen hard upon the thirsty ground
And carved their way to where
The wild and rushing river can be found
And like the rains
I have been carried here to where the river flows.
My heart is racing and my knees are weak
As I walk to the edge
I know there is no turning back
Once my feet have left the ledge
And in the rush I hear a voice
That’s telling me it’s time to take the leap of faith…
So here I go I’m diving in, I’m going deep in over my head, I want to be
Caught in the rush, lost in the flow, in over my head, I want to go
The river’s deep, the river’s wide, the river’s water is alive
So sink or swim, I’m diving in
There is a supernatural power
In this mighty river’s flow
It can bring the dead to life
And it can fill an empty soul
And give a heart the only thing
Worth living and worth dying for.
But we will never know the awesome power
Of the grace of God
Until we let ourselves get swept away
Into this holy flood
So if you’ll take my hand
We’ll close our eyes and count to three
And take the leap of faith
Come on let’s go
…
Lord, I thank you for bringing peace to the valley – and for what awaits us all around the next turn.
Ah, “There’s No Pulpit Like Home.” . . . And, happy birthday to my friend Anna Claire. . . . And, an introduction to Good Soil Ministries, run by my brother-in-law, Steve Meeks.
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I mentioned recently hearing Bob Russell talk about the toll that criticism takes over the long haul.
He told about an Easter service a couple years ago that he thought was the best he’d ever been part of. Knowing Bob, that means that the resurrection of Jesus was proclaimed clearly. But afterwards, an older woman came up to him and complained that it was the first Easter service she could ever remember where the song “Up From the Grave He Arose” wasn’t sung. (So we’re not the only ones who sing that song?)
He also mentioned a guy coming to him recently after one of his messages and bragging about his sermon. But he said, “It reminds me of the kind of messages you used to preach years ago when we came to this church.”
Some compliments hurt. Because they are complaints with complimentary ribbons on top.
A few Sundays ago, when the second assembly was over, someone came to me and said, “That was great. It really seemed like you meant it today.” Uh, yeah. Thanks. I don’t usually mean it.
This anecdote is so small and insignificant. But Bob was right about the long haul.
I’d like to continue growing into the image of Christ so much that some day I can receive every criticism. I’d like to be so centered in my inner being, so reliant on God’s acceptance of me, that I could hear the truth in criticism and not be bothered by what’s not true.
But in the meantime . . . I’ll keep reading Henri Nouwen. He struggled with the same thing!
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Many of you know that Gailyn and Becky Van Rheenen just lost their son, Jonathan, in a traffic accident. He recently sent out this note to friends under the heading “Unspeakable Pain.” With his permission, I’m copying these poignant words here. If you’d like to drop them a note, he can be reached at vanrheeneng@acu.edu or through Mission Alive.
We cry sometime every night. Will the tears stop?
As many of you know, Jonathan, our affectionate first-born son, died in an accident on the evening of February 12. Jonathan died instantly in the sleeping compartment of his truck when his 18-wheeler rear-ended another truck in slow-moving traffic. His co-driver fell asleep at the wheel. Jonathan died five days short of his thirty-fifth birthday, like a reed cut down by a sickle before its time. We feel unspeakable pain — a void, an emptiness, a vacuum that will continue until we follow him in death. Children are to bury their parents. . . . Oh, if we could have died for him! Why could not the order be reversed?
Jonathan and Nicole married on July 18, 2003, and in this short period of time, had two children, Eli (20 months) and Eva (8 months). Our younger son David commented that Jon was “living the life of his dreams.” All he wanted from God in life was an affectionate wife and healthy children. Phyllis Phillips, Jonathan’s mother-in-law, asked Jonathan what he wanted for his birthday. His reply was “I have everything I want.”
He loved all people equally — whether rich or poor, black or white. While shy and unassuming, he was the consummate encourager. We remember stories of him encouraging the mechanic fixing his truck, an African student struggling to adapt to the USA, and his son while learning to walk and talk. He was a man without guile — loving, caring, ethical, a follower of “good.” He was a wonderful father, husband, brother, and son. The words of the birthday card that we purchased before his death but never sent expresses our sentiment:
Happy birthday, son. You were born to be one of a kind . . . .Since the day you were born,
We knew you would grow up to be someone special.
Who could have imagined that your love for life and genuine compassion for others
would touch so many lives.
Our son’s accident closed an interstate highway for five hours.
Traffic frozen,
lives on hold,
thoughts racing.
And then, the traffic began to flow again, first slowly, then more quickly, . . . but with a new wisdom. Life is fragile and finite. We are only visitors passing through this world. Wisdom, however, lacks understanding. “Why, oh why, God? What have you allowed Satan to do?”
We have tried to put our thoughts, our struggles, our prayers on paper and thus refocus life without our first-born. During our first years in Africa, when Jon was only one year old, we heard the blasts of machine guns nightly as Idi Amin of Uganda eliminated all dissenters. We talked our way through road blocks and made final trips to nourish the first struggling Christians among the Bakonjo people in Western Uganda. By God’s might and power 9 churches grew up among the Bakonjo of Uganda. When our team was forced to flee to Kenya, our partnering elders contemplated bringing us home. But God settled us among the Kipsigis people of Kenya for the next 13 years, where He worked in His mission through our team to raise up leaders to plant over 250 local churches. We remember our time in Uganda as our time to testing: Would we stay? Would God use us in his missionaries in Africa?
When we retired from Abilene Christian University to launch Mission Alive, we felt that Becky’s declining eye-sight, a disease we earthlings call Retinitis Pigmentosa (a degenerative eye disease involving loss of peripheral vision and night blindness), was our “Uganda experience,” like Paul’s “thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment [us]” (2 Cor. 12:7). We believe that when Satan saw captives set free from addictions and lostness in our new church plantings in Fort Worth, Austin, and Lexington, and developing plans for church planting in Atlanta, Denver, Dallas, Providence, and other places, he has hit us were it hurts most, the death of our child to discourage and distract.
It is the nature of Satan to hinder the mission of God. He is the great tempter, hostile to God, and working to overthrow divine purposes. He is the great dragon, waiting to devour the young Child at the moment of His birth. God, however, caught Him away to another land (Rev. 13:4; cf. Matthew 2). After his baptism, he sought to turn back the ministry of Christ through temptations before the commencement of Jesus’ earthly ministry (Matt. 4:1-11). Satan entered the heart of Judas (John 13:2) and through religious leaders instigated and carried out plans to kill Jesus (John 8:44). Jesus shared in our humanity “so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death — that is, the devil — and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Heb. 2:14-15).
To some degree we have entered into the grief of God. We know what it means to lose a son.
Because we know the battle (Eph. 6:12), we will not turn back from the mission of God. We know that Satan’s work is manifest not only in the world but paradoxically also in the church. Christianity in North America has become tainted: Too many Christians have a form of godliness but deny its power (2 Tim. 3:5). Missional renewal and church planting are desperately needed in a generation in which too many churches have accommodated to the rationalism and life styles of popular culture and do not readily reflect the majesty, glory, holiness, and love of God.
We have found this death to be dirty, bloody, foul, an unimaginable separation, soul ripped from body. We have seen churches likewise die because of immorality, anger, jealousy, gossip–the lust of the flesh entering the kingdom of God. We perceive resurrection to be the opposite: glorious, aromatic, clean, unimaginable connection, soul united with its Creator. We have experienced such church renewal through affirmation of spiritual reality, focus on holiness, confession, repentance, turning to and reconnection with God. The badness is eaten up in the goodness. Morality is swallowed into immortality. Resurrection transcends death. Thus we not like those who “grieve . . . without hope” (1 Thess. 4:13).
God is at work in the midst of our sadness. Churches of Christ, black and white, were brought together. Jonathan’s co-driver Eric Dickerson, who died a few hours after our son, was in training to become a deacon at the Midwest Church of Christ in Louisville. Jonathan was a member of the Westport Road Church of Christ across the city. Christian leaders from the two churches came to both visitations and memorial services and cried on each others’ shoulders. Nicole amazingly attended Eric’s funeral to give support to his wife Sherri. Black and white, too divided in life, coming together in death! Eric and Jonathan were loving husbands and parents and Christian role models. May they enjoy God’s presence together! . . .
We are thankful for the thousands of people who have sent us words of comfort through emails, cards, and telephone calls. You are comforting us through unbearable pain.
Please pray for us, Jonathan’s wife Nicole, their children Eli and Eva, and his siblings Rebecca, Deborah, and David.
Here are a couple photos of Kerri Lane and her girls serving communion at Highland. The memorial service will be today at 11:00.
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If you have a high speed connection, check out this clip. Thanks, DU, for the link. [NOTE: At 6:30 this morning, this link wasn't working. See my note in the comments. ESPN's version is available on video at espn.com.]
Earlier this week I wrote a post for this morning, knowing I wouldn’t have time today. It’s the one I posted earlier. But now I’m going to stop and take the time to post again.
Kerri Lane died last night. She was an amazing woman–a godly mom raising two of the sweetest girls in the world (kindergarten and 4th grade) by herself. This past summer, in the midst of her battle with melanoma, she wrote these words as she meditated on the word “dance”:
Dancing With God
When i meditated on the word Guidance, i kept seeing “dance” at the end of the word.i remember reading that doing God’s will is a lot like dancing.
When two people try to lead, nothing feels right.
The movement doesn’t flow with the music,
and everything is quite uncomfortable and jerky.
When one person realizes that, and lets the other lead,
both bodies begin to flow with the music.
One gives gentle cues, perhaps with a nudge to the back
or by pressing lightly in one direction or another.
It’s as if two become one body, moving beautifully.
The dance takes surrender, willingness,
and attentiveness from one person
and gentle guidance and skill from the other.
My eyes drew back to the word Guidance.
When i saw “G: i thought of God, followed by “u” and “i”.
“God, “u” and “i” “dance.”
God, you, and i dance.
As i lowered my head, i became willing to trust
that i would get guidance about my life.
Once again, i became willing to let God lead.
My prayer for you today is that God’s blessings
and mercies be upon you on this day and everyday.
May you abide in God as God abides in you.
Dance together with God, trusting God to lead
and to guide you through each season of your life.
Prayer is one of the best gifts we can receive.
There is no cost but a lots of rewards;
so let’s continue to pray for one another.
i hope you dance…and let Him lead!
And now, I hope you’re dancing, my dear friend. Thank you for being Jesus among us. We’ll never be the same.
I’ve been to holiday grief seminars that were helpful. Any time you get people together to admit grief and to process, it’s helpful.
But what happened Sunday evening wasn’t just intellectually helpful. It was healing. When people come together to lament, to remember, to cry out, to pray, to claim hope, to hug, to weep, to laugh, to light candles, to sing, and to listen to Christian music–it goes way beyond helpful.
It’s an experience.
No wonder the psalms of Israel aren’t tame. Maybe you’ve heard that there are psalms of lament, of thanksgiving, of praise, etc. That’s right. Sort of. But the truth is that many of them include more than one response. You can move, for example, from thanksgiving to lament to anger to praise. In other words, they are real. At least I know for me, my emotions don’t come neatly packaged, one at a time.
It’s not just head info about the grief process that brings healing. It is community . . . and worship . . . and emotion . . . and trust . . . and symbol . . . and hope . . . and lament . . . and memory . . . and prayer.
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Tonight in “Oasis” I begin a two-week series I’m calling “Tiptoeing through the TULIP: Five Small Problems With Calvinism.”