Thursday, April 12, 2012

life's not fair

When I was a kid and my mom wouldn't let me do something, inevitably our conversation would end with me telling her "that's not fair" and her telling me that life's not fair. I've learned that lesson a million ways since then, but none harder than with the passing of my friend Sara's son last year.

It was a year ago today. A day that I don't think I'll ever get out of my mind. I remember the weather and the clothes I was wearing and the minute I got the phone call from Sara. I remember praying with her and Keith that day in the hospital asking just simply for God's faithfulness and the ability to believe in it. Since that day though, I have struggled with Luke's passing. It's not that God hasn't proven faithful, but just simply that it is hard and it doesn't seem fair.

I recently read a book called Kisses for Katie and in it she wrote something that really resonated with me, something that spoke to this unfairness of life:

And for a brief moment I wonder how God can be good when babies starve and people die cold and alone and children are ripped from their mothers. But only for a moment. Because then I look around and know that I am nothing without Him. That none of this, none of this life I have, would exist without Him. "Surely just as I have intended so it has happened and just as I have planned so it will stand," He says in Isaiah 14:24. My good God gives only good things; He planned this and He will use this. In Him, even sorrow is Joy. 


... When babies starve and people die cold and alone and children are ripped from their parents --- these are some of the injustices of a broken world. And I think of a Savior who spent His whole life doing nothing but good, saving and healing and feeding and helping even the most undeserving people, dying on a cross like a thief or a murderer. I think of a Father, a Father who desires good thing for his children even more than I desire good things for mine, a Father who could have stopped His Son's torture at any time but instead watched it happen. For me. For you. And I weep at the injustice of it. I think that while no part of me wants to be in this place of losing Jane, not at all, this is where I asked to be: closer and closer to His heart. He knows this pain. He knows what it is to lose a child to the injustice of a fallen world. And so while I still cry and beat my fists on the floor, I find comfort in that, and I ask to be closer still. 


A year later, there is no less grief or pain in this loss, but there is evidence of God's faithfulness in Luke's younger brother Ben. There is comfort in knowing that God understands and has felt their loss. There is hope in knowing that through all of this God will wipe away all of their tears and restore them to a life everlasting with Him and with their son.

Thank you Father for going before us in all things, even the unfair ones. Your faithfulness overwhelms.




2 comments:

Jennie Lucarella Davis said...

So perfect.

saralucthomas said...

Thank you for your words- they are always a comfort to me and Keith. God is faithful! Love you my friend