Heartsick

I read an article tonight on some recent events that made me feel sick at heart. What made me sicker was the sarcastic hilarity with which it was being reported and passed about even by believers. 

  There's a story in the Bible about Noah getting drunk and passing out naked and his tent. One of his sons stumbled into his dad's tent and saw him and went out and begin to ridicule him before his brothers.  The two other brothers took a blanket and laid it across their shoulders and then walked backwards into the tent to where their father lay and spread the blanket over him without ever looking at his unclothed body.  I don't know how their dad found out about it, but he did and he pronounced some pretty hard judgments on the son who ridiculed him. 

  Perhaps the father, who had always been a goody two-shoes type, brought on the ridicule by his bad behavior.  This is the man who was perfect in his generation according to God. When you've always stood up against bad behavior, people take notice of your faults very quickly.  This is Noah, the builder of the Ark to save his family and the animals. The world that had existed was now destroyed.  The Bible describes him as a preacher of righteousness. Whether his preaching was done with a hammer and saw as he built the boat or whether he actually preached words of judgement  and admonishment, he preached for many years as a man of exemplary behavior and great faith. That tends to rankle people. 

Why he found grapes and made wine and got roaring drunk after the amazing things he had experienced we don't know. Perhaps he figured there was no one to be righteous for.  Maybe he thought it didn't really matter anymore.  At any rate, his sons were affected deeply.  Maybe everything the son said about his father was true. He was still judged harshly for his ridicule and betrayal.

After reading the article, with its detailed description of detestable behavior of which no one with any decency can appreciate, I felt at though I needed to walk into the tent backward and lay a blanket over the foolishness of my nation. I am distraught that anyone has seen her this way. People I know are making sarcastic jokes about my nation and my gender and regardless of what they saw, I've heard enough. I want to gently, cover her nakedness and leave her be to sleep it off.

The Miracle

First, let me qualify the remarks to follow by the fact that I do believe in divine healing –straight out miraculous realignment of the body from illness and infirmity to health and ability.  That out of the way, there are many things I believe about miracles that some may take issue with.  I guess when you break it down, it’s a matter of faith, trust and a bit of belief about the subject of life and eternity and the sovereignty of God. 

Also I will begin by asserting that God is good.  He is truth and light.  He is love by his very nature and yet there is a fallen world about us.  There is death, disease, deceit and cruelty none of which are true to the nature of God.  I believe God created this earth and I believe that acceptance of that stand is no less an act of faith than belief in any other origin of mankind and the world about us.  I believe redemption and restoration of God’s good creation is the purpose for which we live and the world is sustained.  I believe that God does not change and that he knew of the corruption to come when he created his perfect work and so he had a plan from the beginning for redemption.  I don’t believe that he forces evil to become good but he does provide a way for all who would choose his good.

“Why would God allow . . . ?” assumes that God can bully evil into acceptance without violating who he is and that man has no choice to love and choose right.  And if man does have a choice to love and choose right then he must have a choice to hate and choose wrong.  If a man has the choice to trust his own judgment, then he also has a choice to trust the judgment of God.  And that is where my belief in eternity begins.

God did not create death.  Sin created death which was part of the turning from God to self.  Physical death in a fallen world that knows disease, deception and violence is actually an act of mercy.  That fallen man’s days on earth are limited is not meanness. It will continue until this issue of sin is solved permanently. It is appointed to man to die and then face judgment.  For those who face judgment before death through the plan of God in Christ, death holds no sting.  In the end, all things will change and be realigned with God the creator through his son.

In the meantime, we have miracles.  We are told to expect them; we are told to pray for them.  Yet miracles are the product of our God, the creator who still works in the world he created.  He will not violate his character to put on a show for us.  He will meet our need as it aligns with his character.  Yet miracles are temporary and carnal.  If a carnal body receives healing, it still is subject to death one day.  If you raise a person from the dead, they must face it a second time or translate into the unseen world in some way.  As long as sin exists, death exists.  As long as sin exists, sickness is a reality.  The only redemption is through trust and surrender and is a product of God’s love and plan. 

My father prayed for my mother’s healing night after night when she had terminal cancer with 6 months to live.  She is 99 years old.  He died in his 80s –older than either of his parents.  But he died and my heart was broken.  I miss him sorely to this day, yet I cannot pray him back.  I would not.  I trust that one day I will join him where he is.  You feel that’s okay because he was old and his life was waning.  Understand death is not okay.  Death was never God’s plan, but man chose his own plan.  One day it will be redeemed.  For now, we trust.  We pray, we believe and then we trust.  So you can’t trust God because he took a sick 10 year old into eternal joy and wellness but you can’t see him anymore?  You can’t trust God because he took a 23 year old who was mangled in an accident that should not have happened?  This is a fallen world. Death was not God’s design.  It is not part of his character.  And yet spiritual life continues and you will join them again in perfection in Christ.  But you miss them so badly.  Yes and the questions without answers demand trust.  Is there less faith in the family that stands by while the one they love is taken into eternity than in the family that demands and may even receive a reprieve for a time from death?  Do I miss my father less because he was old and lived a life of faith and is with Jesus in eternity?

I believe that by Jesus’ stripes we are healed.  I have had God heal me so quickly that I wondered what just happened through speechless joy and amazement.  But I have prayed and been prayed for as I sat in agony on the commode with my head in a pan.  Did God love me less on that day or did I miss the magic prayer and say the words wrong?  I pray for deliverance from a progressive disease.  Am I faulty when Jesus made me faultless because God has not given that miracle?  Can I trust that he says “No” or “Not yet” and still serve him and pray for healing the next day?  And if I am not healed, if I live with disability in spite of my prayer to the day I die, does that mean that I’m spiritually defective or that God loves me less?  My trust says “No.” 

In Christ I am made whole.  In the flesh I still struggle.  Does that make me less a Christian?  By faith I am saved.  By grace I receive life for each day and strength to live it.  Sickness was not God’s idea any more than death but it is a reality in this fallen world.  Can his sufficiency and sacrifice overpower it?  By all means.  Does it always?  It does not.  But God’s love does not change.  This fallen world is not eternal.  It groans waiting for the end when all things will be made right.  Can I groan with it and believe in the sovereign plan of God at the same time?  I must.

I live in this world.  I have stuff.  I care about the stuff.  But the stuff isn’t eternal.  Does God care about my stuff?  He cares about me.  He has intervened in matters of the stuff many times.  Many years ago, my family and I were caught by a microburst while camping.  Nearly everything we had with us was destroyed and we were stunned.  Did God just not care about our stuff that day?  So many years later, I do not mourn the loss of that stuff though I do praise God that none of us were injured when I remember the force and fear of the wind.  The wind did not obey my voice that day.  Is God still good and loving?  We got more stuff.

So my take on the miraculous is that God loves us.  He is only limited by his character which is truth, life, love, mercy.  He is just and yet he found a way to offer grace to sinful mankind and not violate his truth.  He gives.  Sometimes he restrains.  Yet he does not change.  I will ask for the miracle and I will trust in the answer.  I will fail; he will not.  That is the miracle: he will redeem this fallen world.  All else is a temporary fix.