Handling GriefSample

“Where Was God In All Of This?”

In our darkest moments, we can live our lives filled with resentment stomping the ground and shaking our fists at God in a heated rage asking, “Where was God in all of this?” Or, we can put our faith in the lordship of Jesus over life and death. 

The reason why we get agitated when God does not respond according to our wishes is that we want God to perform on cue; we want him to do whatever we ask; we want to boss him around. We may not say it in so many words, but this is another way of saying, we want to be God instead of letting God be God. That is why we keep complaining when God doesn’t do what we ask.

All of us want miracles in our lives. Miracles are nice; but they don’t solve our deepest problem. Yes, we would rather have a nice life than a miserable one; we would rather live a normal life than a tumultuous one. But in the end, none of us will have as much control as we would like. We will suffer losses; we will face death of our loved ones, our children will experience pain and disappointment; our lives will not go as planned. Life will not turn out as we had imagined, expected, and hoped for.

“One of the things you find in people who haven’t suffered much is that they tend to believe in propriety,” wrote Dallas Willard. He’s right. We need to set aside preconceptions about what and how we expected our loved one’s death — and our grief — to look like.

But the beauty of it all is that Jesus Christ offers something more and better than miracles of health and healing in this world. We don’t have to witness a bringing back to life, as did Mary and Martha. We have the assurance that God is with us. We can put our trust in the words of Jesus who said, “I am with you always, even to the end of the world.”

Remember that God is not just crying with us. He brings resurrection and life out of death. 

In the incident of Jesus and Lazarus, Jesus is the real miracle of the story; he is the final and ultimate answer to prayer. He is the resurrection and the life. Not resuscitation but resurrection. Not reversal but renewal. Jesus defeated sin and death and hell. 

If we believe in him—John’s point throughout the story—then we will have life, real, permanent, abundant, substantial, eternal life. If we die, we will still experience that life. But even now we can experience that life because it is bigger than both the life that we know and the death that we dread. “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” 

Then Jesus adds, “Do you believe this?” This is the question we need to ask ourselves when we have the question “Where was God in all of this?”

The answer to this question is that He was and is very much with us, offering us His resurrection life. Will you take up His offer and experience new life in the midst of grief?

Quote: “When pain and suffering come upon us, we finally see not only that we are not in control of our lives but that we never were.” – Timothy Keller

Prayer: Lord I thank you for helping me to understand that during the times when I questioned your presence, You were very much near. Help me to see and believe this. Amen