A Faith that Lives

In response to my previous post a dear friend of mine shared her thoughts and gave me permission to share them here with you.  She said:  "Death brings out compassion and love between family, friends and strangers.  Life isn't on earth, it's with God.  [The runner] served his God while on this earth, now it his time to go home...we celebrate his life.  Through this [the driver] will reach out to God and find a compassionate God to ease his pain and bring understanding to this accident; a God he will hold dear in his life."
She speaks of a redemptive God; God who would bring grace and good from tragedy.  In the midst of the pain, the sadness, the confusion there lives a thing some call faith.  Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance of what we do not see (Hebrews 11:1).  Though I do not see it I have the faith to believe that God mourns with us as we mourn and celebrates with us as well.
I was reminded by another friend of mine today that God in the person of Jesus did Himself mourn the loss of his friend Lazarus, even before He called him out the tomb to live again.  This friend put it beautifully saying, "All we can say (given our finite knowledge) is it [the accident] was an interplay of decisions whose consequences played out. Is this cold and unfeeling? On the surface yes, but it is a starting place where one can begin to deal with it without questioning God's love, goodness or power.  What we must never forget is that God is not sitting on the sidelines, He cares far beyond what we can ever imagine." (See comments on my last post for more).
This was the piece of the puzzle I was missing as I wrote last night. Remembering that we live in an imperfect world where there is sickness, tragedy and death.  When I was diagnosed with cancer in 1991 I didn't think that God "gave" me cancer.  Simply put, there's cancer in the world where I live and I got it.  It would be unfair of me to think God was being punitive and punishing me for some past wrong, or that He was passive in not sparing my family and I the pain of this illness.
So as I continue to contemplate tragedy, grief and God, I return to faith.  A faith that would thank a loving God for His presence in the face of this tragedy and grief; that He would mourn with us and celebrate with us.  Though my eyes cannot see it, my heart believes and I will live this hope, this faith that God does indeed care more deeply than we could ever imagine.


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