Thoughts Prompted By A Friend's Death

This past Wednesday I was in Boston for the memorial service of my young (to me) friend who is now "present with the Lord." Stan's death hit me deeply, perhaps as deeply as any I have experienced. That straight-from-the-pit-of-hell disease cancer robbed him of the long life that we had envisioned for him. He lives on, of course, in the radiant presence of the Lord he loves so much, but he leaves a young widow and two little boys behind (1 and 3). Many of us battled in prayer for Stan's healing over the past 18 months or so, but we were unable to lay hold of it.

I suppose I am taking a bit of risk in sharing the thoughts prompted by Stan's passing, but I feel strongly led to do so. I am framing them in the form of "Things I will and will not do." Here goes.

I will grieve much and encourage those who loved Stan to grieve much and well. My website has a paper I wrote about the importance of grieving, so I won't belabor this point, but believers often have a hard time grieving. Somehow our "Christian thinking" has become twisted so that we think that it's wrong or not very spiritual to grieve loss. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just because we know that our loved one is with Jesus (and certainly gloriously happy about it!) and that God will give us grace to go on and even work good out of this doesn't lessen our sense of pain and loss. True, we grieve differently than those without hope, but grieve we must because loss is loss regardless of how the ultimate outcome looks. So I will grieve much in Papa's presence.

I will pray for and check on those closest to Stan, particularly his wife (Stacy) and sons. As you may have detected in previous entries, I am learning that prayer is far more important and far more effective than I ever dreamed. When you/I pray, God listens intently. And I will be lifting up dear ones much as Papa leads over the months ahead, knowing that my prayers matter. I will also be checking in on Stacy regularly down the road. Sometimes after the dust settles from a tragedy, people get caught up in their own lives and forget the bereaved. I will put reminders into my calendar to ensure that I won't do this to Stacy who is like a daughter to me (more perhaps than she realizes).

I will celebrate the incredible life of my friend and treasure many good memories. Stan's memorial service was indeed a celebration of his amazing life. In 44 years he packed in a lot of life. Like all of us, he was "flawed," but he was also an incredible expression of grace to many.

I will not rewrite the Bible based on my experience. One has to do strange things with the Bible to believe that it isn't always God's will to heal the sick, yet especially in the Western church we have allowed our experience to rewrite the Bible so that Psalm 103:3 changes from "heals all your diseases" to "heals occasionally some of your diseases" and James 5:15 changes from "the prayer of faith will heal the one who is sick" to "the prayer of faith might heal the sick." You get the picture. (And for any who wish to debate this with me, please don't bother and read Andrew Murray's Divine Healing which does as good a job as any of establishing God's will in this matter).

Another part of the Bible that I won't rewrite, though, is God's promise to work things out for good (Romans 8:28-29). Although the premature death of my friend was not God's perfect plan, He now has a perfect plan for those who are left behind. As The Shack so wonderfully describes, God doesn't bring evil, not ever, nor does He allow it in the sense that many think, but He does redeem every thing that we invite Him to redeem (and a lot that we don't invite Him to redeem!). We will see God's redemptive purposes worked out in Stan's family in the days ahead (indeed, we are already seeing that).

Also, I will not accuse anyone of failure. It is futile, of course, to try to figure out why things like this happen, but sometimes folks so desperately want an answer that they start casting around for an answer in a way that suggests that "if only...we had prayed more, tried this, prayed with more faith, etc." this wouldn't have happened. Such thinking eventually leads to an accusation against someone (sometimes even God). On my part, I am quick to become introspective and start accusing myself. I can quickly find myself thinking that I should have fasted more, spent more time in listening prayer, traveled to Boston sooner, etc. But as Aslan points out in The Chronicles of Narnia, asking "what if" is futile and only leads to accusation. "No one is ever told what would have happened, but you can find out what will happen!" I love that! So rather than ask why, I will ask "what now, Papa?" And I am confident that if Father wants me to learn more about this so that healing does happen for others, He will be able to show me what I need to know when I need to know it. Yes, I am deeply sad--even troubled--that I have been so slow to learn but accusation leads nowhere and takes my eyes off of Papa.

Finally, I will encourage everyone in times like this to think more about "Who" than "why" or "what." It is no accident that the psalmist over and over again says things like "God is my refuge" (not answers, promises, principles, etc., but GOD). It isn't trite in the least to say that "Jesus is the answer" when it is said in the right context, folks! God Himself is our comfort, our strength, our tower of hope. The answer now and always is WHO, and I run to Him.

Grieving with hope in the Presence of Abba,

Tom, Abba's little boy