This Isn’t How It’s Really Meant To Be

I have started and restarted this post a million times. I’m having a hard time with words right now.

Last Friday I read the news about the shooting in Newtown and I felt my gut tighten and tears fell for people I have never met.

Last night I read the news about one of my high school teachers, killed in a sudden and tragic car accident on her way home from school and I felt my gut tighten and tears fell for people that I know well.

And as much as I try to get away from the reminders of our broken world, I just can’t.

After we put the girls to bed, Dave and I sat on the couch and I cried and I told him, “I think this has been my saddest year.”

It was the miscarriage that started it, my closest and most personal brush with death and it seems to have opened the floodgates within me. Back in August, when we first received the news, there was a line to a song that kept playing over and over in my head.

“This isn’t how it’s really meant to be…”

It isn’t, you know.

This heartache and this hurt. This suffering and this grief.

This isn’t how it’s really meant to be…

This isn’t what God intended for us. This was never what He wanted.

I know there are some of you reading this – maybe even a lot of you – who don’t believe in God or you aren’t really sure what to think about Him.

If an all powerful God exists, how can He be good?
And if a good God exists, how can He be all powerful?

Those are legitimate questions.

And so, I am going to tell you, as a woman of faith, as someone who knows Him on a personal level…and as someone who has experienced pain and brokenness as a human being yet still has faith,

This isn’t how it’s really meant to be.

He created us with perfection but we chose sin and nothing has ever been the same in this world.

I can tell you, friend, if you are wondering what God is thinking when He looks down on all of this sadness, He is anything but indifferent.

He sees the tiny caskets in Newtown, sees the broken body of my sweet teacher and He is weeping with us.

And I can tell you, friend, when you are asking why He doesn’t intervene, He already has.

I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross...In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in Godforsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross that symbolizes divine suffering.
John Stott

Do you see it there? The love of God?

He laid aside his immunity to pain.

He takes our suffering so seriously that He took it upon Himself.

This is love, friends!

And if you are asking why He doesn’t intervene and put a stop to all of this pain now, I will tell you that He will. But He hasn’t yet because He loves you. If you have not believed that He came to die in your place, He wants you to now.

If the last few days have impressed anything upon me, it is that our lives are a vapor. It is easy to forget when things are going well that we could be gone in an instant, but nobody has another breath guaranteed.

So if you are reading this, and you are thinking about the brevity of this life, would you do me a favor?

Would you consider…just consider the idea that a God of love came to earth cloaked in human flesh. That He laid aside His privilege and power as Creator of the universe and lived with those He created? That He entered into our suffering and He took the full wrath of God on Himself…for you?

I know that for many, belief in one holy righteous God seems antiquated. I know that there have been many people throughout history that have perverted the name of Jesus and used it to further their own selfish purposes. I know there are those who boldly proclaim God’s righteousness but speak nothing of His grace.

I am asking you to lay aside your pre-conceived notions about who God is and seek the truth about Him…start with the book of John. And if you have any questions, would you tell me? I do not claim to have all of the answers but I would welcome the discussion.

This isn’t about me winning converts or proving I am right. It is simply my desire to point you to the One whose arms are open wide, the One who loves you like nobody else, the one who will wipe your tears and clean your soul and clothe you in His righteousness.

This isn’t how it’s really meant to be…

Yet He will make all things beautiful in His time.

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”
Psalm 147:3

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Would you join me in praying for the family of my teacher, Glenda Beasley? Hearts are broken as this wonderful woman who touched so many lives on this earth is being mourned. She is someone who has truly left a legacy, and my heart is aching for those who will be feeling the loss of her presence here on this earth.