If I understood it...

In the last two weeks or so, I have learned of an old friend of my family's getting a fatal diagnosis of cancer, a four year old dying any day of brain tumors and today meeting yet another - 29 year-old-woman with maybe a few weeks left in this life.

Yesterday we took McKenna for a follow up exam.  We have been monitoring her healing and reasonably hoped for a good prognosis at yesterday's appointment.  I just remember the neurologist saying "...cured..." and not really knowing what to say or think for sure.  I just remember the thud of reality of what "could have been" just a few weeks ago...

Now, I wanted to rejoice, to feel wonderful - and I did.  Something inside held me back though... ...something won't quite let me be relieved in some intangible way.  In some ways, it's just another ordinary God- thing.  He does it all the time...  ...I expected nothing less.  In other ways, I look back at the whole thing and I know I had my doubts now and then, but I was truly at peace with God on this one.

This morning I took a call from my boss who had forgotten his camera and had somethings to show me at the airport.  He was taking this 29 year old lady and her husband for what he would call a "run around the patch" and wanted some pictures of the occasion as there may be only days or weeks left now. 

My morning instantly went from taking tech calls from customers, my stressing about this and that to eagerly running an errand away from my desk and meeting this couple that I had heard so much about. 

I am not new to such things.  Many of my grandparents have long since gone from my life.  Along the way a 26 year old friend who was about to marry died unexpectedly too...  I know that I will see many of them again.  But I know that grief we feel all too well, how it comes and goes perhaps for many years.  Somehow, I want it to be right for the families - "in this life" as the Psalmist would say.  I want it to be right in this life.

Here I am today, just sort of watching all of this.  I am somehow connected, feeling things in many ways, not feeling, I don't know.  My daughter is "cured".  we had good news yesterday.

No good news from the doctors for this couple though - just the time they have left to enjoy each other and the good days like today with sunshine and airplane rides; looking forward with smiles to the other side with a new body and no grief. 

Yet, here they are in front of me living today with brilliant energy and smiles.  They are certain of their trust in God and His will.  We talked about that briefly and I am convinced that they are at rest in Him.  I would not dare mention it if I had the slightest doubt.

My mind is taken to that story in which God demonstrated his sovereignty in the life of Lazurus and his two sisters.  Jesus was a relatively short distance away and could have healed him, but instead He waited and Lazurus died.  Then He went.  The sisters, understandably, asked Him "Why..." And in the midst of the story, we read "Jesus wept."

Nothing more.  No reason for Him to weep - at least that I can clearly see.  Understandable that He would have wept for Lazurus who was dead for days, but we also know that He brought Lazurus to life.  Was it for the empathy He had for the sisters?  I think it might have been. 

God's sovereignty runs counter to what I would want.  Sickness and death amongst His children just seems so harsh to me sometimes.  (I mean no sacrilige.)  I think that I run the risk of passing judgement to question it as the sisters did, but I read that Jesus wept, and I know that He is not heartless or cruel.  He has some purpose in mind that I cannot understand. 

I am rejoicing at His intervention on my daughter's behalf, yet left trying to "keep it together" in front of my brothers and sisters who, short of God's miraculous intervention, will all too soon be telling each other goodbye for now... 

This life is so fragile, so short and so hard sometimes.  I rejoice that some of the finest people I know have preceded me in glory.  I am even a bit envious of them, but I am also greived.  Not just for myself, as I hardly know some of them; but for the whole situation.  I would take all the grief if only I could for them... 

But there is Someone who can take your situation and make beauty from it.  He has the power over sin and death.  He hold the keys of eternity.  He paid the price to cover your sins and be with Him (and His saints) in glory.  In this life, we greive for a little while for those we have lost to Heaven, but how much sadder is this for someone whose eternity is not Heavenly? 

I trust that you have your eternity in His hands?  There is no other good alternative...  I pray you have, or that you will...  There is so much at stake.