In my personal life, one of best friends in high school passed away. It had been a while since we were close, but it was a grief I've never experienced before. As 16-year-olds, we talked about death a lot. Maybe we were realists, but I think it had something to do with the reality of our relationship with the Lord. We were beginning to understand that life, real life, was to be with God, and so death was something that brought us into a truer version of life.
And even though I know she's dancing at the feet of Jesus, and experiencing true joy and freedom right now, you can't help but ask why? She was 24 years old. She had plans and dreams for the future. You also think of the people she left behind. She married her boyfriend in the hospital mere days before she died. Life isn't good right now, not good at all.
Not to mention the day she died there was also a mass shooting in El Paso. Life didn't seem good. I'm not trying to minimize the good because I'm beyond blessed, but death gives us a perspective and frames our life in a way that is hard to shake.
This world is broken. There is depravity and hatred. There is so much we can't understand. Why would someone shoot so many people? Why would a 24-year-old die from cancer? We get so broken and lost that we will search for anything to blame. We blame the government, we blame the location, the security, the people around us. We can't explain it, no matter what we do.
The only way to explain it is sin. We live in a fallen and broken world with a bunch of fallen broken people. How could it not be crazy?
But God is still good?
Yes, because God came down into this messy stupid world because He loved us, and died for us and because of that he claimed victory over sin and death.
He's won!
Death was arrested.
But how can that be? I just attended a funeral. I very much know that death is a reality.
We are in the already and not yet phase of this beautiful story the Lord is writing. God has won, but He hasn't come back to claim his earth. We've had D-day but no V-day.
So, that is why we can sing and shout that we are free and death was arrested, even at a funeral.
Life doesn't make sense, because it shouldn't. It's already but not yet. God is good, even when life isn't.
So what do we do?
We hope and long for the day of victory. We enjoy the good things in the world because they are glimmers of what is to come in the future, and we pray our loved ones get to see heaven too.
