My heart is not quiet. It is not ok this morning.
I feel like my insides are swirling slowly around, first going one way, and then another.
Yesterday some of my friends lost their mother. She loved God fiercely, and had been fighting a fierce and fast battle with her health. The loss reminds me so much of my mother's death last year and I know how hard this is for them. I know this is one of those moments for which there will always be a "before" and an "after".
Yesterday a plan crashed with a helicopter as it was landing in DC. At least 60 people were killed.My sons are flying today, my husband and I are flying next week, and my daughter is flying after that. I love traveling, but right now I'm not feeling that excitement. Instead I'm picturing the families of those people reeling from the news that everything is changed.
This week rebels are bombing the city of Goma in DRC. They are using assault rifles to terrorize the people there who have been scrambling just to survive anyway, and people in the organization we have loved and supported for years are dead, dying and missing. At some point the gangs will have to move on, but life will never return to what it was.
Lord, it's a lot.
You are good, God. I know that. In my head I know that wholly. But, do I believe it with my heart completely? Do I believe You are good all of the time when You let our mothers and sons and daughters and wives and husbands and friends and grandmothers and loved ones suffer and hurt and be scared and die really hard deaths?
If I'm going honest, I would say that I CHOOSE to believe You are good all of the time. The fact that there is a choice though, shows that there is a doubt I am consciously pushing past. I believe You honor that choice, You honor that intentional faith: just like You did when the father cried out, "I believe! Lord help my unbelief! (Mark 9). So I keep choosing faith, and I hope that at some point it will come more naturally and I won't have to feel the anguish that comes from trying to cross the bridge from believing in my head to believing in my heart.
When the belief holds the same weight in both head and heart, then the peace is able to settle in. Oh man: I've felt that peace and it's amazing. I've also had moments where that peace was just out of reach and it is so hard.
There is a verse in Psalm 116 that reads: "Return to your rest, Oh my soul, For the Lord has dealt bountifully with you." It is a good way to remind myself that even when the world is in chaos, God is here and taking care of me which should quiet my soul. The reminder helps, and I re-read it several times this morning. Then I continued through the Psalm and came across verse 15, which stopped me in my tracks.
Precious in the sight of the Lord
Is the death of His saints.
Wait, what?
I don't think I like this. How is something that is so freaking painful for so many people actually PRECIOUS in God's sight? At first glance that seems almost mean! And, as my boys are both on a plane this morning, it doesn't really feel all that comforting.
The footnote in my Bible reads: "Precious: their deaths, like their lives, are significant and important to God." Well that does not really help my heart. A life can be decades and decades full of love and faith and works and love...while death itself happens in less than a second. How are those things equally "precious?"
Strong's definition for "precious" in this verse is: valuable, prized, weighty, rare, splendid, costly, highly valued and influential. The death of one of God's babies is highly valued. It is prized. It is costly and it is splendid. Why?
The moment of our death is the moment we begin living in eternity.
Our eternity matters to God. It matters so very much. It is precious.
Just like God is with us in our lives, He is with us in our deaths, and those are precious moments to Him. I wanted longer with my mom. My friends were not ready to say good-bye to their mother. I bet that the families of those who died in that crash and in those attacks did not feel like their loved ones were ready to go.
BUT.
It was time, and God was there, bringing each of them into their new life with Him. That moment when that person crossed from being with us to being with Him was personally supervised and watched by a Father who handled them as one would care for something incredibly valuable, prized and loved.
As I choose (yes, I know) to believe that God's ways are higher than mine, then I can work to wrap my head around the fact that whenever a person's death must occur, it will be precious and handled gently and lovingly...even if it does not feel like that to me. He is God, and He says death is precious. While I can't say I totally grasp it in my heart right now, I can say that I feel strangely comforted by that. Maybe that means it is on the way across the bridge from my head to my heart.
