A stranger in my life took their own life the other day, on a Sunday. As tornadoes raged around our city, their own personal twister roared and ripped inside the soul. I knew them in passing, by their smile and the work of their two old hands, knew them by their name and their walk, but I didn't really know them. I hadn't a clue about the things they carried, as the title of that book goes.
The news came blatantly and yet uncertainly. For never having said anything but the customary "hello" and "how are you," it ripped into my heart pretty hard. Too much thought on the idea and I grow nauseous, heart-sick. If only I had known, I think, but what else could I have said except hello? A hello is something. An invitation of kindness? I always said hello and never goodbye.
Speaking of the tornadoes, twenty-three funerals will be or have been held since Sunday. Death came in a whirlwind on a spring day, on a Sunday, and the Lord allowed it. He did not merely sit on high in heaven. His Spirit was there, down among the gnarled wreckage of homes and bodies, watching and weeping with the families over the dead.
How can I say this and say it with a straight face? Because I know my God. He is the Good Shepherd, one to be trusted, not just with a few hours on Sunday, in church or in hellish horror, but with our entire lives and our eternities. Trusted to see it all and to love us. Love doesn't always look like acceptance and smiles. Love can sometimes mean confrontation and alienation, doing a hard thing for the good of the person, making a choice, not just feeling a feeling. The Good Shepherd in Psalm 23 is God. He cares for His sheep, for those who believe in Him, He calls them mine and will not forsake them. Others may flee, friends may leave in the wake of tragedy and anguish, but He remains.
Psalm 23
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness
for his name's sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever.
The Shepherd is good. Only good doesn't mean safe (as we like to think) and as Lewis points out in his books about Narnia. Sometimes good is downright dangerous, fearsome. Because we are sinners who need sanctifying, whose default it is to desire sin. Because we are weak, and He is strong. Because it's not about this life, these bodies. It's all about our eternal souls. Because God loves us, He is willing to endure allowing us to be hurt, to be disciplined.. this doesn't mean that pain is always discipline for a sin or something like that... sometimes an event, an agony, is completely senseless to us, incomprehensible.. and will be until we die.
Let me be clear: God is not a sadist. He is our Savior. He loves us so much, feels our pain so deeply, that he came down to be born in a manger and be nailed up on a Roman cross. His agony is our glory, and this agony of His will turn even our greatest agonies into glories. He did it for us. For me. For you.
And I don't mean to make sorrow and grief simple or trite. They are not. They are complex and horrible. Again, there are some things that we won't understand until we meet Christ face to face. But I'll say it right now. I'll put my neck on the block. If something will bring me closer to Christ, even something terrible, then give me the 'something.' Not because I want it (definitely don't want it when I get it), but because I need it, because God gives it.
When I sat crying in my dorm room several times a week during freshman year, I sure did not want that hardship, that loneliness. But looking back, God has allowed me to see just a glimpse of how that grief was a road closer to Himself, how it opened up doors and started friendships I couldn't have even dreamed up. My sorrow is small compared to many, compared to those now weeping at funerals and picking up pieces of their lives scattered by a twister, compared to the suffering of a man depressed and of the gaping loss of life to others.
But I've been taught, His grace is sufficient for them as well. And I've been shown, that like the stars twinkle in a night sky, beauty and goodness shine brighter against a dark background. Like the stars, the Shepherd's goodness shines in sorrow. There is nothing to distract from it. Somehow, God is good to us not in spite of, but through the hardship!
Though the pain will come, the night will descend, and the rain will fall, the Lord promises to be right there in the thick of it with us.
What lavish love, that He promises to comfort us, even as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and I'll take Him at His Word.
But soon there will come a day.. when:
"He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." — Rev. 21:4
Until then, we are still here, in the old order of things, and the Lamb is still good, still God.
To take a line from the Bible and later, Jane Eyre:
"Even so, come, Lord Jesus."