I Am Angry

I am really angry.

On Sunday, I began thinking about every wrong and ugly thing that has touched my life recently.

My brother and his little boy, missing their wife and mommy for more than a year now.

My Papa, getting weaker and weaker, and my Gram, facing life without her husband of 63 years.

My sweet friend, who has struggled for years with disease and multiple transplants and who now has to stay at a rehab center in a town not her own, away from all she knows well.

A dear family from church, whose seven year old son was hit by a car and who is struggling to figure out their new normal as well as how to care for their other children (including a newly adopted daughter) while also caring for their son in long-term care in a far-away city.

I know that each one of you has your own list.

Are you angry yet? This world is broken and we have an enemy that takes full advantage of our brokenness. He is prowling and trying to devour all of us. He is hurting people who are dear to me, and that makes me angry.

It also makes me grateful. 

I am grateful for a God Who has already fought this enemy, has died in the battle, and has won the war through His resurrection. 

I am grateful for a God Who cares so much about bringing people to Himself, that He was willing to die. 

I am grateful for a God Who loves us so much that even though we were the ones who brought death into the world, He works crazy hard to help people stop running away from Him. 

Like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be recovered, so we must die. But that is not what God desires; rather, He devises ways so that a banished person does not remain banished from Him. ~ II Samuel 14.14

I am grateful for a God Who cares more about molding people into the image of His Son than about protecting them from danger or pain, and so is willing to allow our enemy to continue prowling. 

I am grateful that our enemy's time is limited.

I am angry. And I will allow my anger to drive me. I will allow my anger to motivate me to work, to show God's love to the hurting around me, to do my part in bringing God's kingdom to earth here and now. As my dear friend said, "Give fully, believing He will fill the space."

Why?

Because I am grateful.

Are you angry too? As I tell my four year old (and myself, too!) when rage threatens to erupt, getting angry is not wrong. It is what you do with that anger that is right or wrong. Instead of allowing that anger to harden your heart, allow it to soften your heart towards God and send you clinging to His peace. Let it send you off to battle for those that He loves. 

God has already done all the work through Jesus's death and resurrection. Now God allows me to join in the defeat of our enemy through the all-powerful love of God that moves through me.

When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory." "Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. ~ I Corinthians 15.54-58

I Hate Death

I hate death.

Is that too raw, too vulnerable?

Perhaps, but it's true.


I have spent a lot of my adult life trying to claim that death is not bad, that death allows us to be with God.


That's what many Christians would say, wouldn't they?


But that's not what they really believe.

Why do we think that we have to defend death?


C.S. Lewis, in A Grief Observed, says 

It is hard to have patience with people who say, "There is no death" or "Death doesn't matter." There is death. And whatever is matters...I look up at the night sky. Is anything more certain than that in all those vast times and spaces, if I were allowed to search them, I should nowhere find her face, her voice, her touch? She died. She is dead. Is the word so difficult to learn?

Maybe because that is what we were taught in our churches.  Maybe because of pieces of Scripture that we read such as "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain." ~ Philippians 1.21


We long to be with God, long to see Him face-to-face, long for the day when there will be no more hurting, suffering or tears...


And we long for the day when there will be no more death.

Isn't death what gets us to that glorious day?


Yes, but that isn't how it was supposed to be.


We weren't supposed to have to die to get to God, we were supposed to simply live with God.

And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." ~ Genesis 3.22

We brought death into this world through our sin and death is our enemy.


Our enemy!

My heart is in anguish within me; the terrors of death assail me. ~ Psalm 55.4

Our God is a God who saves; from the Sovereign LORD comes escape from death. ~ Psalm 68.20

For you, LORD, have delivered my soul from death... ~ Psalm 116.8

On this mountain he (the Lord) will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever. ~ Isaiah 25.7-8

I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. Where, O death, are your plagues? Where, O death, is your destruction? ~ Hosea 13.14

We have opened the door and allowed death to enter our world.

Jesus came and defeated our enemy.  Did you hear?  Death is defeated!!!!!

...through the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. ~ II Timothy 1.10

The last enemy to be destroyed is death. ~ I Corinthians 15.26

For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. ~ Romans 6.9

Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 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. ~ Revelation 21.4

This is how it is supposed to be.


So go ahead. You have permission.


Hate death. Give praise and thanks and glory to God.







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