The answer waits!

 After last week's post on the subject of death, I received an email from a very dear young friend. In it, she informed me that she related very much to the post as her cousin, a young woman of only 38 years of age, looking forward to a wedding that had had to be postponed because of the Covid-19 restrictions, had died during the early hours of the previous day, after "a horrendous battle with cancer". She went on to inform me that her mother was struggling to come to terms with the situation, asking the question that most people would ask: "Why her?"

I was able to share with my friend that I could relate to her current situation. I, too, had a cousin who died from cancer (leukaemia, to be precise), and at only 21 years of age. She was, officially, my cousin but, to me, she was the sister I never had. She too was looking forward to her wedding day - indeed, her father and her fiancé went together to cancel the wedding cars, and order the funeral cars. My maternal grandmother was the only surviving grandparent and, at 84, she could only ask, "Why not me?"

A pastor tells of an experience in his youth when he went on a holiday with some friends. he didn't take as much care with his money as he ought to have done and, before the holiday was ended, he had nothing left. He wrote to his father (this happened in the days before mobile 'phones, and WhatsApp!) requesting that he be sent some more cash. However, his father decided that he should teach his son something about the value of money (this definitely happened in an earlier era!), and did not respond to the request. The young man's companions wondered why he had been turned down, but were told, "I'll wait until I get home. Then he'll tell me himself"!

Many of us go through experiences that we don't understand, but the attitude of that son is the attitude that we ought to have towards our heavenly Father - if, indeed, we are His adopted children! Life holds many unanswered questions, but we may have the assurance that the Sovereign God is in control, and that He is working all things out in accordance with His divine plan. He has already said: "... as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts." (Isa 55:9). That's why we cannot comprehend all that He is doing in our lives.

We may have to wait until we enter His nearer presence before we receive explanations for many of the difficulties that we face, the trials through which we pass, and the wounds that can bring so much hurt. But even that is not guaranteed. Almighty God is not bound to explain His dealings with us and, I suspect that, in His presence, we will no longer be concerned. We will know, as we cannot know here, that He was right.

Of course, even all of that depends on us being in a right relationship with Him now, through accepting the salvation that was gained for us, at such great cost, at Calvary. And let us remember that, at Calvary, even Almighty God was, for a brief moment of earthly time, separated from the Son. Paul tells us that "For our sake He [the Father] made Him [the Son] to be sin Who knew no sin," (II Cor 5:21). When I shared this thought, in a different context, last Sunday in Lamonzie-St Martin, I said "It is an incredible thought! In the plan and purpose of Almighty God, Jesus, the beloved Son became, for a moment, Sin - sin in all its blackness, its grossness, its wickedness and its sheer evil. And the Father, Who is pure, and without sin, could not look upon this evil and had to turn away His holy eyes. And I often wonder if this was the moment when the Son cried out what we often call "the cry of dereliction," "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" (Matthew 27:46)". The eternal bond was, for that brief period, severed. He knows; and He understands! 

Are you in a right relationship with Father God, through the reconciling sacrifice of the Son, by the power of the Spirit? Before those words already quoted, Paul wrote: "... in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us. We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God." (II Cor 5:19-20).

With Paul, I beseech you, if you are not already so, be reconciled to God.