“An unexamined life is not worth living.” Socrates
Tyranny of the urgent grips me. I have countless things on my to-do list that I cannot pause and dedicate a chunk of my time examining why. Why? Why my heart lives in the throes of a grief that I could not yet explain- a grief that is now almost a year old, that I push to the back of my mind only to return again and again to haunt me.
The beginning of this year I remember having a keen sense of my mortality as I felt my body breaking down like the 46 year-old machine that it is. There is a creakiness to the bone, a dimming to the eyes, a fogginess of the mind, and a slowing of the reflex. And I thought to myself—this tent, this shell, is dying. Around the same time I learned that Jake had passed away. Previously, the thought of this dying boy I had forcibly blocked from my mind so I could celebrate the holidays, so I could stop from crying.
I had started to count time—it was Day 14 of 365: “To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under the heaven… A time to be born, and a time to die; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn and a time to dance…” Ecclesiastes 3
I have 46 long years. Jake only had 7 or 8. He lived and died half a world away. He didn’t know me nor I him. He was my little nephew’s friend who, one fine day, was found to have only a few months to live.
The earthquake that rocked one family, one community, oceans away delivered aftershocks in my comfy little niche. I cried for this unknown boy. It was inexplicable and strange—the crying. And I remember pleading with the Lord, telling my sister to please tell Jake about Jesus.
What do you say to a mother who’s been told her son has terminal cancer? How do you soothe a heart that’s been shattered into a million pieces? Words are cold comfort to bare-naked, raw-gaping humanity that is drowning in its grief.
In my cozy little corner of living, an unwelcome guest had opened the door for a visit and would not leave. It had the face of youth and innocence, pain, and suffering, life and death. It had a name. Its name was Jake.
We live our mundane lives, one day slipping quickly into another, with our unending things to do, tyrannized by the urgency of living and we think to ourselves—“Where did the time go?”
To a mother whose child is dying, what is time? Does she count time with every beat of that child’s heart? Does she plead with all her soul for time to stop, or beg for more time—a few more weeks, a few more months, heck!, bargain to give this child a whole lifetime: interminable, endless days... to see this child rise from his bed and live!
I witnessed on social media the resolve of a mother to scour the ends of the earth for any hope that her boy might live. I saw the coming together of an entire community behind a family, behind a boy.
Over the summer I asked the Great Physician to heal Jake; to miraculously reveal Himself to him through some dream or vision. I asked God for the light not to go out on this family; that they will not shut their door in the face of the God who had allowed this.
Thereafter, my prayers evolved from Jake’s physical healing to the healing of his spirit. I thought that if the Lord heals him now, someday he will still die. But if he receives eternal life, though he dies, yet he shall live.
In my head I had conversations with Jake’s mom. “Why would a loving God allow her child to suffer?”And I made up rebuttals in defense of God in my mind. But again, what do you say to the mother of a dying child? Why am I so quick to defend God?
The heart has a mechanism for self-preservation. To cope with the grief, mine chose to forget. I assured myself that everything will be alright; Jake’s mom will find some medical breakthrough, some trial drug and Jake will be cured and they shall all live happily ever after.
But no. They did not live happily ever after. At Christmastime Jake’s mom posted heart wrenching, horrendous pictures of him on social media and her tone was that of a mother losing hope. The old optimism and determination was gone. Jake-reduced to skin and bones, his leg hugely deformed. Jake naked, not moving, not eating. He had to be cleaned up all the time… I couldn’t look at death. But it was there, staring me in the face.
It is Christmas. Where is God?
There was a black cloud over my heart: the same grief resurrected; a sadness and a mourning at a time when I needed to dance. After all, the Messiah has come “To heal the broken hearted; To set the captives free; to make the lame walk and the blind to see.”
At a time when my world was feasting and dancing, on the other side of it, there was sackcloth and weeping.
So to celebrate Christmas and New Year with my family, I had to block all thoughts of Jake. My last plea: “All I want for Christmas is for Jake to know Jesus before it’s too late.”
They buried Jake a couple of weeks into the New Year.
A week or so after the funeral, as I was praying for the people in my life, I paused as I was about to pray for Jake...There is no more Jake to pray for. Jake is gone, and yet, the grief remains---like a very long afterthought, an ellipsis, a drawn-out sigh…
“Why do we never get an answer when we’re knocking at the door, With a thousand million questions about hate, or death or war... Lyrics to “Question” by Moody Blues
I couldn’t even begin to imagine what goes through a child’s mind whose body is wracked with interminable pain and suffering; a child who knew he is dying: what does he think of God? And the questions of the mother who watches him die: does she blame God?
Christian thinker and apologist C.S. Lewis, as he struggled with God over the loss of his wife wrote:
“But go to (God) when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become.”
Elie Wiesel, a Jewish writer and holocaust survivor in his book “Night” recounts of a hanging of two adults and a young boy that all the camp prisoners were forced to watch. As the young boy was about to be hung someone behind Elie Wiesel asked, “Where is God?” Where is he?” Wiesel narrates: “The two men had died instantly but the boy, being light, was still alive. For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony before our eyes and we had to look him full in the face. Behind me, I heard the same man asking: “Where is God now?” And I heard a voice within me answer him. “Where is He?” Here He is—He is hanging here on the gallows.”
In that moment-- Elie Wiesel declared-- he lost his faith in God.
“Why do we never get an answer when we’re knocking at the door?”
If there is a God, why is there so much evil and suffering in this world? Elie Wiesel concluded thus: there is no God.
But if you remove God from the equation, the question itself dissolves. It is because when one thinks there is evil, then one must think there is good. And if one thinks there is good and evil, then one must assume that there is a moral law by which one can differentiate between the two. And if there is a moral law, you must put into the equation a moral lawgiver.
Atheist Richard Dawkins postulates that there is no good or evil, “nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”
The atheist however, in declaring that there is no God, no good or evil, has not solved the problem of suffering.
C.S. Lewis continues in his book : “Not that I am in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him.”
Skeptic David Hume writes: “Epicurean’s question still remains unanswered: Is he that is God, willing to prevent evil but not able; then, is he impotent? Is he able but not willing, then, is he malevolent? Is he both able and willing, whence then, this evil?”
Perhaps there is no answer to the question of evil and pain and suffering. Or there is an answer but we know not what it is. But whatever the answer might be it cannot be that God does not care.
The man who witnessed the cruel hanging of the boy on the gallows and questioned “Where is God now?,” him I would take to Golgotha, at the foot of the cross where the holy, spotless Son of God hung naked, disfigured beyond human recognition; pierced and bruised, and wounded God-Incarnate-- whose every excruciating breath breathed love, whose very wounds bled love--scorned, and mocked, and ridiculed by “His own:” His own who did not receive Him.
God is not removed and distant from us. He has become like one of us.
“In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God…should make the Author of their salvation (Jesus Christ) perfect through suffering.” Hebrews 2:10
Isaiah 53 in the Old Testament describes a God who is a suffering servant, a “man of sorrows and familiar with suffering.” “He was oppressed and afflicted yet He did not open His mouth; He was led like a lamb to the slaughter... He was assigned a grave with the wicked though He had done no violence nor was any deceit in His mouth.”
The Great Creator-God was brutalized and humiliated and killed by His own creation.
If God is not love, why is He—who is God--hanging on the cross?” He--who is God--became like one of us with this singular purpose, a purpose borne from the Garden of Eden, from the foundation of the world—to suffer and die on the cross.
The Captain of our salvation Himself suffered and died and rose again.
It finally makes some sense to me, why this grief. I wanted so much to tell Jake and his mom that there is a thing as HOPE. I cannot take away his pain, or keep him from dying. I have no answers to why God allowed this to happen. But this I know: this life is not all there is.
“After the suffering of His soul, He will see the light of life.” Isaiah 53:11 The Captain of our salvation has conquered death.
Had God miraculously healed Jake, he will still die someday. What then?
“If only in this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.” 1 Corinthians 15:19
As I sit here I know that this body of mine is dying. This earthly tent is not meant to last forever. But I have a soul that shall outlive this shell.
“And I give to them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither can any man pluck them out of my hand. “ John 10:29
The beginning of this year I remember having a keen sense of my mortality as I felt my body breaking down like the 46 year-old machine that it is. There is a creakiness to the bone, a dimming to the eyes, a fogginess of the mind, and a slowing of the reflex. And I thought to myself—this tent, this shell, is dying. Around the same time I learned that Jake had passed away. Previously, the thought of this dying boy I had forcibly blocked from my mind so I could celebrate the holidays, so I could stop from crying.
I had started to count time—it was Day 14 of 365: “To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under the heaven… A time to be born, and a time to die; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn and a time to dance…” Ecclesiastes 3
I have 46 long years. Jake only had 7 or 8. He lived and died half a world away. He didn’t know me nor I him. He was my little nephew’s friend who, one fine day, was found to have only a few months to live.
The earthquake that rocked one family, one community, oceans away delivered aftershocks in my comfy little niche. I cried for this unknown boy. It was inexplicable and strange—the crying. And I remember pleading with the Lord, telling my sister to please tell Jake about Jesus.
What do you say to a mother who’s been told her son has terminal cancer? How do you soothe a heart that’s been shattered into a million pieces? Words are cold comfort to bare-naked, raw-gaping humanity that is drowning in its grief.
In my cozy little corner of living, an unwelcome guest had opened the door for a visit and would not leave. It had the face of youth and innocence, pain, and suffering, life and death. It had a name. Its name was Jake.
We live our mundane lives, one day slipping quickly into another, with our unending things to do, tyrannized by the urgency of living and we think to ourselves—“Where did the time go?”
To a mother whose child is dying, what is time? Does she count time with every beat of that child’s heart? Does she plead with all her soul for time to stop, or beg for more time—a few more weeks, a few more months, heck!, bargain to give this child a whole lifetime: interminable, endless days... to see this child rise from his bed and live!
I witnessed on social media the resolve of a mother to scour the ends of the earth for any hope that her boy might live. I saw the coming together of an entire community behind a family, behind a boy.
Over the summer I asked the Great Physician to heal Jake; to miraculously reveal Himself to him through some dream or vision. I asked God for the light not to go out on this family; that they will not shut their door in the face of the God who had allowed this.
Thereafter, my prayers evolved from Jake’s physical healing to the healing of his spirit. I thought that if the Lord heals him now, someday he will still die. But if he receives eternal life, though he dies, yet he shall live.
In my head I had conversations with Jake’s mom. “Why would a loving God allow her child to suffer?”And I made up rebuttals in defense of God in my mind. But again, what do you say to the mother of a dying child? Why am I so quick to defend God?
The heart has a mechanism for self-preservation. To cope with the grief, mine chose to forget. I assured myself that everything will be alright; Jake’s mom will find some medical breakthrough, some trial drug and Jake will be cured and they shall all live happily ever after.
But no. They did not live happily ever after. At Christmastime Jake’s mom posted heart wrenching, horrendous pictures of him on social media and her tone was that of a mother losing hope. The old optimism and determination was gone. Jake-reduced to skin and bones, his leg hugely deformed. Jake naked, not moving, not eating. He had to be cleaned up all the time… I couldn’t look at death. But it was there, staring me in the face.
It is Christmas. Where is God?
There was a black cloud over my heart: the same grief resurrected; a sadness and a mourning at a time when I needed to dance. After all, the Messiah has come “To heal the broken hearted; To set the captives free; to make the lame walk and the blind to see.”
At a time when my world was feasting and dancing, on the other side of it, there was sackcloth and weeping.
So to celebrate Christmas and New Year with my family, I had to block all thoughts of Jake. My last plea: “All I want for Christmas is for Jake to know Jesus before it’s too late.”
They buried Jake a couple of weeks into the New Year.
A week or so after the funeral, as I was praying for the people in my life, I paused as I was about to pray for Jake...There is no more Jake to pray for. Jake is gone, and yet, the grief remains---like a very long afterthought, an ellipsis, a drawn-out sigh…
“Why do we never get an answer when we’re knocking at the door, With a thousand million questions about hate, or death or war... Lyrics to “Question” by Moody Blues
I couldn’t even begin to imagine what goes through a child’s mind whose body is wracked with interminable pain and suffering; a child who knew he is dying: what does he think of God? And the questions of the mother who watches him die: does she blame God?
Christian thinker and apologist C.S. Lewis, as he struggled with God over the loss of his wife wrote:
“But go to (God) when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become.”
Elie Wiesel, a Jewish writer and holocaust survivor in his book “Night” recounts of a hanging of two adults and a young boy that all the camp prisoners were forced to watch. As the young boy was about to be hung someone behind Elie Wiesel asked, “Where is God?” Where is he?” Wiesel narrates: “The two men had died instantly but the boy, being light, was still alive. For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony before our eyes and we had to look him full in the face. Behind me, I heard the same man asking: “Where is God now?” And I heard a voice within me answer him. “Where is He?” Here He is—He is hanging here on the gallows.”
In that moment-- Elie Wiesel declared-- he lost his faith in God.
“Why do we never get an answer when we’re knocking at the door?”
If there is a God, why is there so much evil and suffering in this world? Elie Wiesel concluded thus: there is no God.
But if you remove God from the equation, the question itself dissolves. It is because when one thinks there is evil, then one must think there is good. And if one thinks there is good and evil, then one must assume that there is a moral law by which one can differentiate between the two. And if there is a moral law, you must put into the equation a moral lawgiver.
Atheist Richard Dawkins postulates that there is no good or evil, “nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”
The atheist however, in declaring that there is no God, no good or evil, has not solved the problem of suffering.
C.S. Lewis continues in his book : “Not that I am in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him.”
Skeptic David Hume writes: “Epicurean’s question still remains unanswered: Is he that is God, willing to prevent evil but not able; then, is he impotent? Is he able but not willing, then, is he malevolent? Is he both able and willing, whence then, this evil?”
Perhaps there is no answer to the question of evil and pain and suffering. Or there is an answer but we know not what it is. But whatever the answer might be it cannot be that God does not care.
The man who witnessed the cruel hanging of the boy on the gallows and questioned “Where is God now?,” him I would take to Golgotha, at the foot of the cross where the holy, spotless Son of God hung naked, disfigured beyond human recognition; pierced and bruised, and wounded God-Incarnate-- whose every excruciating breath breathed love, whose very wounds bled love--scorned, and mocked, and ridiculed by “His own:” His own who did not receive Him.
God is not removed and distant from us. He has become like one of us.
“In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God…should make the Author of their salvation (Jesus Christ) perfect through suffering.” Hebrews 2:10
Isaiah 53 in the Old Testament describes a God who is a suffering servant, a “man of sorrows and familiar with suffering.” “He was oppressed and afflicted yet He did not open His mouth; He was led like a lamb to the slaughter... He was assigned a grave with the wicked though He had done no violence nor was any deceit in His mouth.”
The Great Creator-God was brutalized and humiliated and killed by His own creation.
If God is not love, why is He—who is God--hanging on the cross?” He--who is God--became like one of us with this singular purpose, a purpose borne from the Garden of Eden, from the foundation of the world—to suffer and die on the cross.
The Captain of our salvation Himself suffered and died and rose again.
It finally makes some sense to me, why this grief. I wanted so much to tell Jake and his mom that there is a thing as HOPE. I cannot take away his pain, or keep him from dying. I have no answers to why God allowed this to happen. But this I know: this life is not all there is.
“After the suffering of His soul, He will see the light of life.” Isaiah 53:11 The Captain of our salvation has conquered death.
Had God miraculously healed Jake, he will still die someday. What then?
“If only in this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.” 1 Corinthians 15:19
As I sit here I know that this body of mine is dying. This earthly tent is not meant to last forever. But I have a soul that shall outlive this shell.
“And I give to them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither can any man pluck them out of my hand. “ John 10:29
I have hope in a future where God will wipe away every tear and where pain and suffering and death will be no more…when God Himself will put an end to this, my grief, of seeing the face of pain and suffering and death; of not being able to offer the hope that is in Jesus.
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