Hope
Page 10
As John’s burden for children grew, he began feeding homeless children, teaching them to read and telling them about the Lord. His shop became known as “the Ragged School.” John often limped around the waterfront with food in his pocket, looking for more children to tend. John Pounds rescued five hundred children from despair and led every one of them to Christ. His work became so famous that a Ragged School movement swept England. In John’s honor, Parliament passed a series of laws to establish schools for poor children—boys’ homes, girls’ homes, day schools, and evening schools. All had Bible classes in which thousands heard the Gospel.
John collapsed and died on New Year’s Day in 1839 while tending a boy’s ulcerated foot. He was buried in a churchyard on High Street. All of England mourned, and in the church was hung a tablet that reads, “Thou shalt be blessed, for they could not recompense thee.”[14]
What might John Pounds have become had he not been severely injured? We don’t know. But we do know what he became in spite of his injury—or perhaps because of it. It’s an inspiring reminder that our afflictions and limitations don’t mean God is finished with us. The weaker we become, the more God’s grace is multiplied (2 Corinthians 12:9). Going through a rough patch often equips us for further service. It also allows us to empathize with and minister to people who otherwise would never have crossed our paths.
We would discard suffering as a vile thing, but God wastes nothing. In His hands, suffering becomes the means for miracles. He will open new doors of witness, and His strength will shine through our weaknesses.
Claim Your Promises
[Jesus said,] “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
JOHN 11:4
I said earlier that healing has a dual purpose—our good and God’s glory. Jesus went a step further when He said that even death can glorify God.
Perhaps the greatest truth in the entire Bible as it relates to sickness among Christians comes from the words of Jesus in John 11:4. His friend Lazarus was ill and went on to die, and when Jesus arrived, His friend had been in the tomb four days. But Jesus didn’t say that Lazarus’s sickness wouldn’t include death. He said that it wouldn’t end in death. It would provide instead an occasion for God to be glorified.
Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we must cling with hope to the promise that, although our illnesses may include death, they will not end in death; we, too, will be resurrected. Armed with this truth, we can see how God can glorify Himself even through disease. And when we are faced with life-threatening sickness, our fear can be replaced by a determination to glorify the One who “works all things according to the counsel of His will” (Ephesians 1:11).
Consider Your Future
I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.
ROMANS 8:18
Suppose you won a free trip around the world for you and a loved one. It included first-class accommodations at five-star hotels, private planes, lavish gifts, and personal tours. (See how powerful the imagination is?) But suppose as you opened the envelope containing the tickets, you suffered a paper cut on the end of your finger. You might say to your companion, “Oh, I cut my finger!” You’d grimace for about half a second before grinning from ear to ear and saying, “Who cares? We’re about to take the trip of a lifetime!”
I would say nothing to trivialize disease; I know the misery of it firsthand. But according to Paul, and from the perspective of our eternal God, the sufferings of this present world are less than a paper cut in relation to the glory yet to be revealed to us.
Although Christ has conquered sin and death, the effects of both linger. But only temporarily. Disease must be accepted, but only for now—and always with the knowledge that its master, death itself, no longer has power over us. If this life were all we had, then cancer and every other life-threatening illness would truly be tragic. But because death’s prison doors have been destroyed, death can no longer hold us captive. This is why Paul says, “To live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). We look forward to our new resurrection bodies, perfect and free from all defects. As Paul explains, Christ will “transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself” (Philippians 3:21).
It would be nice to be healed here and now, as Lazarus and Hezekiah were. But if not, we’ll simply be healed later. Every one of us who belongs to Jesus Christ holds a Lazarus coupon. What Jesus did for him, God will do for us. The big difference is that our restored lives will be eternally free from further disease. “God will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).
Dr. Jonathan Thigpen, former president of the Evangelical Training Association, was forty-five years old when he began having some muscular disorders. The diagnosis was the same as that of Ed Dobson—ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. This disease is debilitating and terminal: it has no known cause or cure.
Thigpen describes the chilling fear he felt after learning of his diagnosis: “I remember walking out of the doctor’s office in Carol Stream, Illinois, and deep in the pit of my stomach there was a feeling of overwhelming fear. . . . It felt like I was being hugged by something so dark and so horrible that I can’t describe it.”[15]
Then an old, familiar voice echoed through his memory—the voice of his father, Dr. Charles Thigpen, reading the words of Psalm 46:
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear,
Even though the earth be removed,
And though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;
Though its waters roar and be troubled,
Though the mountains shake with its swelling.
PSALM 46:1-3
Many times Jonathan had tagged along as his dad visited hospital patients and read those soothing and powerful words. Now it was his own soul that was soothed. As he reached his car, the dark clouds overshadowing his spirit began to dissipate. God was still in control—he knew it for a certainty. Jonathan didn’t have any answers, but he knew that “fear cannot stand in the face of a faith and a God who does not change. My fear had left.”[16]
Jonathan took hold of Psalm 46 as so many of us often do with particular Scripture passages that hold remarkable power just when we need it. In the months that followed, Jonathan’s spirit was willing but his flesh was increasingly weak as he traveled the country sharing those words about his refuge and his strength, the help he had found to be very present in his time of trouble. Once again, Christ claimed victory in the face of what had seemed a meaningless misfortune.
A Puritan preacher once wrote, “Sickness, when sanctified, teaches us four things: the vanity of the world, the vileness of sin, the helplessness of man and the preciousness of Christ.”[17] The last of those, I submit, overpowers the emptiness of the others. If heaven is what lies ahead for us, what can we possibly complain about?
Instead, think of the best: we have a Great Physician who raised His own Son from the dead, leaving behind an empty tomb. We have a heavenly home with welcoming doors opened wide. We have a sympathetic Savior who never imparts a spirit of fear but a spirit of power, love, and a sound mind. To understand that is to enjoy a spiritual health that overcomes the darkest days that disease can inflict.
[1] David Jeremiah, When Your World Falls Apart (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2000), 38.
[2] Isobel Kuhn, In the Arena (Singapore: OMF Books, 1960), 225–232.
[3] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “FastStats: Leading Causes of Death,” January 11, 2013, www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm.
[4] Ezra Klein, “21 Graphs That Show America’s Health-Care Prices Are Ludicrous,” The Washington Post, March 26, 2013, www.wa
shingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog//2013/03/26/21-graphs-that-show-americas-health-care-prices-are-ludicrous.
[5] “National Health Expenditure Data: Historical,” CMS.gov, www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/NationalHealthAccountsHistorical.
[6] C. S. Lewis, “The Efficacy of Prayer” in The World’s Last Night and Other Essays (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1960), 9.
[7] Randy Alcorn, We Shall See God: Charles Spurgeon’s Classic Devotional Thoughts on Heaven (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Books, 2011), 298.
[8] Kuhn, In the Arena, 225–232.
[9] Amy Carmichael, Gold by Moonlight: Sensitive Lessons from a Walk with Pain (Fort Washington, PA: CLC Publications, 2013), chapter 10.
[10] Ed Dobson, Prayers and Promises When Facing a Life-Threatening Illness (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), 56.
[11] Thomas Watson, A Divine Cordial: Romans 8:28 (La Vergne, TN: Lightning Source, Inc., 2001), 20.
[12] Kuhn, In the Arena, 252–232.
[13] Kuhn, 252–232.
[14] Adapted from Robert J. Morgan, From This Verse (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998), August 13.
[15] Robert J. Morgan, Real Stories for the Soul (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2000), 1–3.
[16] Morgan, 1–3.
[17] Author unknown, quoted by Curtis C. Thomas, Practical Wisdom for Pastors (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2001), 102.
CHAPTER 5
HOPE WHEN FACING DISASTER
* * *
We will not fear, even though the earth be removed,
and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.
PSALM 46:2
At least the Trowbridges had a place to hide—a neighbor’s cellar. Kelcy, her husband, and their three children filed into its cool darkness, huddled beneath a blanket, and listened to the warning sirens howling through a Monday afternoon in May of 2013. The Trowbridges lived in the suburbs of Oklahoma City, and a deadly tornado was on its way.
The family could only sit, holding hands and listening as the sirens were drowned out by sounds that were louder and far more terrible. Shrieking winds converged upon the house, and there was a violent pounding on the cellar door. The children began to cry. “Shhh, it’s just debris,” Kelcy said. “Loose things blowing around, hitting the walls.”
Then, after about forty minutes, an eerie silence fell. The Trowbridges emerged into the light of a world they didn’t recognize. The neighborhood was a shambles. Where was their home? It lay flattened to the earth, like rows of other houses on their street. Where was the family car? They eventually discovered that it had been lifted into the air, carried down the street, and then thrown on its roof.
One by one, the neighbors emerged, all speechless. Where there should have been birds singing, there was only the sound of muffled sobs. Here were the remains of their lives and the loss of comfortable illusions—illusions of stability and security in a rational world.
Mr. Trowbridge wasn’t one to stand around. He went to work salvaging, sorting. But after a moment, he pulled back abruptly.
“Call the police,” he said in a flat tone.
There, amid the bricks and pipes and rubble, was a little child—a girl no more than two or three years old. She was dead. Mr. Trowbridge was stoic until the police arrived, and then he lost it—weeping for the girl, for his family, for the violence of the earth.
Meanwhile, near Plaza Towers Elementary, Stuart Earnest Jr. saw and heard things that he knew would haunt him for the rest of his life. The school was directly hit by the tornado. Seven children lost their lives, and Earnest couldn’t block out the sounds of the tragedy. He heard the voices of those screaming for help and the equally heartrending screams of those trying to come to their assistance.
A fourth grader named Damian Britton was among the Plaza Towers survivors, thanks to a courageous teacher who had saved his life. It seemed to Damian that all the horrors occurred in a five-minute period before the students came out of their hiding places.
It was much the same everywhere—five short minutes for little ones, or anyone else, to learn such profound lessons of life and loss.
I have to tell you that it is difficult to recount those stories. It would be so much easier to keep the tone pleasant and comfortable, even in a book like this one. The problem, of course, is that the stories are true, and we know it. And they can happen again in another five minutes or tomorrow or the next day. Every year the news brings us yet another reminder that the natural forces governing this planet are troubled and unstable.
We live in a kind of necessary denial. We proceed with our daily lives as if we have guarantees of security that simply aren’t possible in this life. We congratulate ourselves for our impressive advances in technology, and we pretend we’ve conquered every challenge to life and health. But it’s not so. Nature is gorgeous and inspiring—and also monstrous and inhuman.
There are too many earthquakes, fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, famines, storms, and tsunamis for us to even keep a running tally. Natural calamities rage on in our world, costing us countless billions of dollars and, more significantly, hundreds of thousands of lives.
Natural disaster raises many questions about the nature of our security, about our fear of the uncontrollable, and especially about the character of God. These questions need answers. But I’d like to open the discussion by sharing about a biblical character who experienced two natural disasters in the space of twenty-four hours. His name, of course, was Job.
Natural Disasters in the Life of Job
Job has become the quintessential model for enduring disaster, and if ever there was someone we’d think didn’t deserve it, it was Job. The first few verses of his book give testimony concerning Job in four areas. We learn first of all about his faith—that he was a man who was “blameless and upright, and one who feared God and shunned evil” (Job 1:1). Job was not sinless, but he was mature in character and a man of righteousness.
Job is also distinguished because of his fortune: “His possessions were seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred female donkeys, and a very large household, so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the East” (Job 1:3).
In Job’s day, wealth was calculated in terms of land, animals, and servants, and Job had all three in abundance. He was the wealthiest man of his time.
He wasn’t just a man of fortune but also of family. The first chapter tells us that he raised sons and daughters who were close knit. They held great birthday feasts for one another, after which their father would make burnt offerings to God on their behalf. He said, “It may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts” (Job 1:5). Faith and family were intertwined for him.
Finally, he had many friends. Some are famous for their role in Job’s book, but there were no doubt many others who weren’t mentioned. Job 2:11 recounts how a group of his closest friends arrived to mourn with him after the great losses he sustained. If you know anything about Job’s narrative, you remember that these friends ended up letting him down. But still, they were his friends, and they came from distant parts to minister to him in his time of need.
They were right to sit with him to help him bear the load of mourning. Where they went wrong was when they attempted to give pat explanations and solutions for a situation that was anything but simple. In the end, they brought out the worst rather than the best in Job. Yet we’re told that he forgave them and there was reconciliation (Job 42:9-11).
What those friends couldn’t know—what Job himself couldn’t know—was that spiritual forces were in play far beyond their reckoning. The details are recounted in Job 1:8-12:
The LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil?”
So Satan answered the LORD and said, “Does Job fear God for nothing? Have You not made a hed
ge around him, around his household, and around all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But now, stretch out Your hand and touch all that he has, and he will surely curse You to Your face!”
And the LORD said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your power; only do not lay a hand on his person.” So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.
Armed with God’s permission, Satan went to work, and Job’s ruin came rapidly, with four calamities occurring in one day. These were the terms: Satan could come after Job’s possessions, but not his person. And so the great experiment began. But what we see already is that it’s clear who is in charge of this world. The devil can test Job, but not without God’s permission. Our God reigns, and we can’t afford to forget it during a discussion of disaster—or any other time.
What do you give the man who has everything? Disaster—that was something Job had yet to experience. It begins during one of those feasts, with the sons and daughters all gathered together, laughing and enjoying one another’s company.
A messenger approaches Job with disturbing news. Sabean raiders have descended on his estate, hijacked Job’s cattle, and killed his servants. This messenger alone has survived to tell the tale (Job 1:13-15).
Yet even before the servant has finished his account, before Job has taken it all in, the door opens and another messenger stands there. He is pale, his eyes wide, as he whispers, “The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants” (Job 1:16).