The other day I was supposed to share in class about some Devotional Classics I’ve been reading. I sat in front of the class and told them, “I’ve had a lot going on lately. It all seems to have coated my soul in Teflon and nothing I’ve read has stuck. I’m sorry, but I can’t share with you about the readings. Instead, I’m going to tell you about my last few days.” I went on to tell them about some dear friends of mine who found out they were pregnant with their first child. A few weeks into the pregnancy they learned that their baby had a birth defect that would kill their child within hours of birth if not during birth. They carried their child for several more months, enjoying their little boy for the short time they could. During those months we found out that we were pregnant with our third child. A week and a half ago, we were in the doctor’s office viewing our 20 week ultrasound. While the technician was telling us how wonderfully perfect our little baby is my phone vibrated. I instantly knew that it was the text message telling us that our friends’ baby had died. In that instant I was slammed with the heights of joy and depths of grief. I felt sad, joyous, relieved, grief-stricken, guilty, angry, happy… a flash flood of emotions washed over me in a moment.
After I shared, my professor talked about a passage from Julian of Norwich in which she prays for suffering. This is such a strange concept to my 21st Century ears. My default setting is to avoid suffering at all cost. This is really a silly notion, though. I can’t get very far through my day before I’m standing nose to nose with the affects of suffering. It is part of living in a fallen world. As Julian lay dying, though, she thought of Christ on the Cross:
…I have never asked for any kind of revelation or vision from God – I only wanted to have the compassion I thought a loving soul would have for Jesus by witnessing his suffering. It was at that moment that I saw red blood running down from under the crown, hot and flowing freely, just as it must have been beneath the crown of thorns that pressed upon his head. I fully perceived at the moment that it was Jesus, both God and man, who suffered for me, for I now knew it directly without anyone telling me.
Slowly, I think I’m beginning to see the role of testing and suffering in faith. But this understanding does little to mitigate the pain of living in a fallen world. I’ve heard many well-meaning folks talk about losing a baby like it’s a good thing because the baby is with Jesus now. While I believe the child of these believers is now with Christ because of his covenantal promises, I find that my heart still grieves over this loss. It isn’t supposed to be this way. I cannot look at this as a “happy” thing. I will not look at the deadly affects of sin on God’s good creation and say it is a good thing. But I can be thankful for it. I am thankful because there is a God who stepped into this mess. There is a God who is not only compassionate but empathetic to us in our sufferings. And through his sufferings and victory over death he will redeem this world. Death will be no more and then he will wipe away every tear. I will not like it but I will be thankful that I can lean hard into a Savior who understands the pain of death far more intimately than I do. I will not like it but I will look with faith and hope to the day when the death of Christ fully accomplishes the death of Death.
