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In the midst of my grieving the loss of my friend, who in her passing left a thirteen year old daughter, a sixteen year old son, an incredibly gifted youth/children’s pastor husband and a host of others. All of us were caught up in the wake left by the boat of death, which whizzed by us all at too high of a speed. Here we are bobbing around in the water trying to get our bearings from what just occurred and this thought drifts across my mind about death.
“This is all wrong.”
The pain of watching others suffer from cancer till the death, while others are taken immediately in a sudden car crash. Children losing their mother way too early in life, and spouses who are suddenly left without their lifelong partner. A four- year- old destined for multiple surgeries throughout her life in order for her spine to grow with her or she would die. Then taking a look around at the pain of this world brings the “it’s all wrong” to a tsunami level and the pain is insurmountable. The moment of awareness that washes over us when we for the first time hear of instances of genocide that still happens today, the astonishing numbers of orphans that exist all over the world, the astronomical numbers of millions of children forced into sexual trafficking …. All these things and much much more are most certainly…
…all wrong!
The pain of this world is overwhelming. The pain in my own world feels utterly excruciating. When the two collide, who can bear it?
It’s all wrong!
After pouring my heart out to God on the matter one day, ending my prayers with the statement that it all seems wrong; I sat in the silence of my tears. The Spirit seemed to concur as I heard the exact same statement quoted back at me in the divine.
“IT IS ALL WRONG!”
A flood of truth and hope filled my soul. It was all right in Genesis chapter 1 & 2, but by chapter 3 sin had entered the human story and…
It all went wrong.
Fast forward to the New Testament. The gift of Jesus – a God who loves us so much that He became like us to provide a way for us to turn things around and invite humanity into the process of making it right through redemption. Death was made right in the sacrifice God made on the cross when He died and rose again. We do have the promise of eternal life and the reason this world seems alien is because we were created for Eden and through redemption are destined for Heaven. Yet we are caught between the Garden of Eden and a heavenly Paradise.
It is all wrong, but Jesus came to make it all right.
To be a Light in the darkness (John 8:12)
To make the crooked straight (Isaiah 45:2)
To set the captives free (Luke 4:18)
To heal the brokenhearted (Luke 4:18)
To bring Life in death (Romans 7:10)
There is so much in this world that is still all wrong, but I am finding comfort in the fact that it will one day be made right. I find even more comfort that the rightness can begin now in my heart as I invite Jesus into all that is wrong in my life and allow Him to heal me, comfort me and lead me. Jesus takes my crooked path of a life and masterfully sets out to straighten it. As I invite Him, He walks with me through the pain of the wrongness of having my friend taken away. And somehow as I look through my pain towards the Mystery of God that I do not get, that Hugeness begins to engulf every tsunami which attempts to overtake me….somewhere in that vastness, the enormity of Love, I begin to get my bearings in these rough waters. I grab on to the life raft of belief in a promise that through Jesus…
All that is wrong is being made right!
“For God so loved the world that He gave his One and Only son so that all who believe will not perish but have life everlasting.” John 3:16