Day 1: When we cannot abide

I had planned to post something else today. In fact, I had it all written. The introduction to my topic about abiding in Christ. But yesterday something happened that put today into a different light. A family from my little community, on a hike together in the mountains on a perfect fall day, was struck by a rock slide and killed. Five dead: mom, dad, daughter, two cousins. The youngest daughter survived because her father gave his life protecting her. The oldest son was not there.

Suddenly my little corner is reeling, grief-stricken as a community tries to grasp a whole family struck down. Faces we love. People we serve with, work with.

 

And sometimes we cannot abide. 

Sometimes the questions are too hard and the pain is too sharp and the voices we raise are too full of the agony of living on this planet where rocks fall and crush us for no apparent reason.

But though I don’t know why and though this is too hard and though I want to shake my fist at heaven and tell God a thing or two, in my heart there is this whisper.

“Let not your heart be troubled. . . believe in Me” (Jn. 14:1).

He doesn’t ask us to figure out why or laugh it off or pretend the suffering isn’t ugly and raw and painful. He just asks us to believe.

And Jesus, He knows that even that is too much to ask at times. He knows we cannot abide this life.

That’s when He abides with us.

“And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—the Spirit of truth…He dwells with you and will be in you” (Jn. 14:16-17).

He’s always in the act of coming to us. Pursuing us. Chasing us down, even. That’s how much He longs to abide with us. He came to the Garden to seek us. He bent into flesh and walked among us. He opened the tomb and showed us His scars. And He breathes His Spirit into us, right now, if we will only heed.

“I will not leave you orphans,” He says. “I will come to you” (Jn. 14:18).

This is my prayer tonight: that an orphaned brother and sister will feel the tears of their Father as He gathers them into His arms. That Christ will come to abide in this grief-shrouded place. That we will see Him, know Him, and believe in His love.