I received a call from a very good friend of mine this week. His cousin has been in a battle with a life threatening disease for a while, and last Wednesday he lost. Probably one of the most difficult things to swallow was that his cousin was young. He just got married a year ago.
Curveball.
This same friend called me 2 days later to let me know that his grandfather has passed away as well. You could just hear it in his voice that the family is wrecked right now.
What do you say to someone who just lost 2 family members within a matter of days? How do you comfort someone in that mind state? As my mind raced for the right words to say to him, I just went blank. Seriously, what do you say?
I’m sorry?
What can I do to help?
They are in a better place!
For my friend, he is a man of God, he knows all of that already. So what do you say?
.......and then it became clear.
In times like these, when questions are flying through the minds of the grieving, what is needed is truth.
Experts in any field will tell you that when things don’t make sense, go back to what does and start from there.
For me, it just means that my friend needed to be reminded of where the starting point is.
He needed brought back to the truth.
Brought back to what we know for sure.
Brought back to what makes sense.
Brought back to the Cornerstone.
See, we don’t just believe that God is awesome when life is going great. That’s easy......anyone can do that. We believe that God is awesome when things go haywire.
We believe that the scriptures we read when life is a bowl of cherries, say the same thing when curveballs are being thrown to us.
Our circumstances don’t get a vote in the truth.
It’s when we are no longer able to answer our own questions that we truly begin to seek God’s answers.
My friend is solid and he is going to be just fine, but we can all stand a reminder can’t we?
I sent him a text message earlier today. It simply said “Romans 8:18”
I just wanted to throw another reminder out there to him.
1 Peter 5:10 says, “But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered for a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you”.
In this life, there will be suffering. Being a Christ follower does not make you exempt.
It is however, what you choose to see in that time of suffering that separates us from the world.
Choose to see that God is still good.
For no matter how dark the cloud, the SON is on the other side.
Peace to you my friend, and to anyone else dealing with pain or questions tonight.
