All about death

These past few weeks I feel like I have been bombarded by death. I attended a funeral for a father who was killed. I read articles about babies being murdered. My uncle had a life threatening surgery because of his cancer. I heard about Pastor Rick Warren’s son dying. Several people in Boston lost their lives. And here’s the thing: I can’t handle it. I have cried so much. The pain is overwhelming. I want to scream at God, “Why! Why does it have to be so hard? Why does it have to hurt so much?”

But I’m not supposed to “handle it.” Someday I will be in heaven. Someday there will be no more death. No more injustice.  No more sickness. My siblings won’t struggle with mental, emotional, and physical disabilities. Jordan won’t have seizures. I won’t have to worry about saying goodbye to my family and friends. We won’t be tired. We won’t be sad.

The pain and the injustice in the world at times humble me. God has shown me that I am no better than a man who shoots 20 kindergartners. I am no better than a doctor who kills babies. I am no more in control of my emotional and mental state than one who chooses to take their own life. And I cannot keep my self from having seizures or getting cancer.

Apart from the grace of Christ, I am the worst of the worst, and I deserve the worst of the worst. I cannot save myself for I have nothing to offer. Yet Almighty God came into this awful painful world to die the worst death so that his blood might buy my undeserving, ill deserving self out death. And he has promised that at anytime he will come and restore what has been destroyed by sin.

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light and momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)

His Plan or Ours?

 “Life could be so different in four years!” I stated after explaining my extravagant plans for moving, going to school, graduating, having children, going overseas, etc.

“Ya,” Jordan’s grandma replied, “the Lord could come back; we could be in Paradise.”

At that moment I felt as if the Holy Spirit smacked me in the back of the head and asked me if I forgot that I’m not in control. I’m not even in control of my own life. Sure, God is leading us to move. Sure God wants us to make plans. But my hope and security should not be in my own plans. A good friend of mine told me to make plans but hold them in an open hand. Never close my fist around my plans, lest God have to pry open my hands to show me his plan. Rather, make plans, and allow God to change them whenever he so chooses.

Now this is a lesson that I always think I’ve learned, at least until God shows me that I have yet again fallen in the habit of planning every little detail of whatever I can. You see I love planning. I love making lists. You can ask Jordan--I have lists about everything. I have our next month planned out to what we will eat every night, when we will relax, when we will hang out with people and so on. Now sometimes this is good and useful. I just need to remember that I may plan my way, “but the Lord establishes [my] steps (Proverbs 16:9).

So this means that Jordan and I plan on moving this summer. We plan on going back to school. Eventually we plan on graduating, having a family, and being missionaries. However, our primary goal is to give glory to God by following His will. So if (when) God shows us that His will is something other than what we had thought, we will follow Him. It is about His will and His plan, not ours.