While much of my social media this week has shown excitement building around the launch of a Bible Study about life I have coming out on Monday, that reality sits alongside many tears at the reality of death.
Not only did this week mark an anniversary of a loss, a dear friend of mine has also been fighting every moment of this week for her life as cancer and other illnesses take over her body. I didn’t know how close she even was to death when I wrote the first draft of this blog post earlier this week. Now, I both deeply grieve and deeply rejoice in the fact that she is fully healed and whole in the presence of Jesus.
In a final round of edits of the Abundant Life study, I came across a section I wrote about death and suddenly realized how much I needed my own words:
“Jesus knew the end of the story for Lazarus and yet, He still wept. We hold the hope of a perfect end to our story, while also living in the reality of a broken world.”
If you know the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead in John 11, you know that in his humanness Jesus grieved in the face of death around Him. What a gift to be able to know The Resurrection and The Life Himself and to know He weeps with us at the pain of grief and loss in our lives.
The same dear friend who as of this morning now sees Jesus face-to-face, once told me some powerful words in another season of grief and loss. We were in college together and a little boy from my church died. A few days later she was checking in on me and I remember telling her how I was grateful he wasn’t suffering anymore since he had battled cancer over half of his little 8-year old life. I wondered aloud to her why I still felt so sad since he was so much better off right now, fully healed in the presence of Jesus. She simply replied, “Well, Bekah, death was never part of God’s original plan.”
I hold onto her words again today. I’ve come to realize that at times it feels like “it’s not supposed to be this way” because truly it’s not actually supposed to be this way! Death and pain and heartache and division and sorrow and separation from God were never part of His original plan.
Abundant Life isn’t about everything being amazing and going as we humans plan. Rather, it is a steadiness God provides us in knowing that when Satan is at work stealing, destroying, and even killing, Jesus is also at work bringing life (John 10:10). Even when death comes, we hold firmly to the truth that it is not the end of the story! Because death was never in God’s original plan He made a way to make sure it never got the final word. So God became man and stood on this earth and suffered the worst death imaginable. Because He died and because He defeated death in His resurrection, we too will be raised to new life.
So we hold the tension. We grieve deeply the death and injustice and pain we see around us each day. We weep, like Jesus did at the death of his friend. We hold each other up (sometimes even literally) in the moments life feels like it’s crumbling, AND we celebrate the God who is redeeming it all.
This is abundant life.
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