Chapter
38
I don’t know really if this is the end of the book. Maybe the point is that there is no end. I do know that my life has no end. I also know that with every breath, God has blessed my life. He has cared for every detail of my life. July 10th, 1998, was not the end of Jackson’s life. It was also not the end of mine, nor Elna’s, nor Alex’s. It also didn’t end with the blessings of Grace and Hope coming into our lives. God’s not done with us yet. God knew that in this world we would have trouble, but we can take heart for He has overcome the world. Life has purpose, and God is so Good. He loves us perfectly, and He NEVER leaves our side.
This book was meant to be written to my three daughters, Alex, Grace, and Hope. My desire was that I might share with them some insight into how God has walked me through my life. He not only sustained me, but He also pushed me upward through the most difficult times of my life. Perhaps one day I might share this journey with others on a similar path. While no two situations are ever the same, I testify as a witness that God’s Love has been poured out on me to overflowing. Being a parent that has had a child pass away placed me in the worst “fraternity” in the world. From time to time, people we know and have been friends with throughout our life have also had children that have passed away. I hurt so much for them. While I don’t know the particulars of what they are going through, I know that God does. I want to speak the truth of His promises into their lives. I want to share with them the love that God has for them. God wants to be close to them and to all of us. He’s knitting things together and is not limited by what we determine is possible.
One of the couples in our small group at First Baptist Church in Covington lost their son, Noah, in a car accident in 2015. Noah was a great kid who passed at the age of 21 while driving home from a Christian summer camp where he had spent his summer as a camp counselor. The world grieves the loss of Noah. He was funny, handsome, never met a stranger, and deeply loved Jesus. I wept and continue to weep with his parents as they push forward on their journey in life. I want to love on them like the church loved on me and Elna. I want to be there for them.
After Noah’s accident, I went to Noah’s celebration of life services that were back at First Baptist Church in Covington. Well over a thousand of Noah’s friends and family attended that celebration. I’m confident that not one person there had any doubt where Noah was that day. He was with His Lord and His Savior.
I walked around the church that day during the services. Noah’s mom, Susan, had put together a display of pictures of Noah from when he was a child. I had known his parents for about ten years, so that would have only started from when Noah was about 10 or 11. As I looked at the poster board and the pictures of 4-year-old Noah, something immediately caught my eye. There was 4-year-old Noah taking a picture with Bob and Larry of the Veggie-tales. Noah’s family hadn’t attended church at that time, but Noah had been invited to come to Vacation Bible School that year. The year was 1998. It was the month before Jackson would go to Heaven. Jackson was also 4 at that time. I had not known this, but Jackson and Noah shared that same VBS class. And one more thing……. The people dressed as Bob and Larry standing with Noah at VBS in June of 1998…….They were me and Elna.
God is into the details.
When I speak to grieving parents, they almost always ask, “If God is so into the details, why did God cause my child to die?”
While God is in control of all things, He is not the cause of all things. I once read the following meme:
Genesis tells us that in the beginning, God created everything, and it was good. In fact, He stepped it up a notch after creating humans and said they were “very good.” His creation was perfect, and He walked among them. He just had one warning to them. He told them to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because if they did then they would surely die. Well, humankind made a decision to not follow God but to follow their own desires for humanity saw that fruit as “good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom.”
As humankind ate the fruit, death came into the world. This was not God’s choice. It was mankind’s. Now before we start blaming Eve or Eve and Adam, imagine if suddenly at this moment you were perfect and blameless, and your slate of sins were completely erased. I imagine that it wouldn’t take more than a minute for you to stain yourself with a sin. It may not come in the package of an apple from a tree, but perhaps it would come in the form of pride.
So, there you are in your personal sin as we all are.
But God didn’t just leave Eve and Adam in their world of sin. Immediately, God had a plan to make things right. He spoke to Eve, Adam, and Satan and put them in their place. He told Satan that the offspring of Eve would come to crush his head. God was pointing to Jesus at the very moment sin entered the world. God was not slow to act. God would fix what we had/have done.
Let me be clear. God did not bring death into the world. We did.
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Genesis 3 New International Version
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
16 To the woman he said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
God’s plan for us and His perfect creation was for us to live with Him forever. We get a glimpse of what that world was supposed to look like by looking at the new world that God is preparing for us. God says that in this new world, He will wipe away every tear from our eyes. There will be no more death. There will be no more pain. There will be no more suffering. The former things like car accidents and cancer have been abolished!
Revelation 21
Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
In the garden, God had warned us about death. He didn’t want it for us. He wanted us to live in perfection.
So, when people share stories of how it was God’s will that this person or that person died. I’m here to tell you that they are wrong. God’s will was that death would have NEVER come.
Many people think they are helping when they share an ignorant image of why God may have “taken” your loved one away. Some say ridiculous things like, “God must have needed Jackson as a beautiful flower in His Heavenly Garden.” This is absurd. As a person studies the true character of God, nowhere do we find a picture of God as a sadistic gardener who plucks four-year old children from their parents to plant a crop of Jacksons next to the east wing! This just isn’t Him.
One prayer that I know God honors is when we come to Him humbly and simply ask, “God please reveal to me who you really are.”
He will answer that prayer. However, be ready to accept His answer, and not yours. God created you. You do not create God. Now you might and probably already have created a god in your own image, but that’s worthless. That god is powerless to help you. In fact, having faith in a false god is dangerous. Sometimes faith in a false god may seem ok for a while. If a skydiver has complete faith that he doesn’t need a parachute to land safely on the ground, he can jump out of an airplane feeling safe and full of “hope” as he drops to the ground. In fact, if he is hooked up to a radio on the way down to the Earth, he can be interviewed and share how “awesome” he’s doing, and the “feeling” of the “rush” can be inspiring for others to follow him. If at this point, he is asked how things are going, he might respond with, “So far so good!”
However, having faith in something is worthless unless it is faith in something real and true. There is no sense in a nebulous “my truth” or “your truth.” There is only one truth.
How do we learn the Truth? We come to God for the answers. He has provided several tools to learn who He is. You won’t be disappointed. Don’t be scared. He can handle what you currently think of Him. He actually already knows what you think of Him.
Pray and ask Him for His help.
Hebrews 13:6 New International Version
6 So we say with confidence,
“The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.
What can mere mortals do to me?”
Reference
Note: All Biblical references are from the New International Version.
New International Version (NIV)
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