The Great Sadness

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my wife losing her wedding ring. That was a difficult situation at the time and it made my wife really sad. But then six months later, to have it pop up in the glove box of my truck, brought us both a great deal of joy. It was an unexpected loss followed up by an awesome reward! That happens a lot in life, however sometimes the loss can be far greater than just a piece of jewelry.

 

We have been living at our small beach house now for exactly one year. It isn’t really a house, it’s a duplex and up until a few weeks ago we didn’t have a neighbor in the other unit. Then Bill moved in and while it was nice to have the whole place to ourselves, we are actually really happy to have such a great guy living next door. Bill is a single Dad, super friendly and the type of person who is always going out of his way to help others. He owns his own business and because he travels a lot (and because he has a good heart) he often allows his friends and business partners to stay at his beach house when he is gone.

 

On Sunday we met one of Bill’s partners and his wife who are staying at his house this week. They have three small children, one of which is adopted, and another baby on the way. So they obviously love children. The sad story that Bill shared with us is that they lost their first baby when it was only 8 weeks old. Nothing could be more painful than to have to bury a child. Bill also explained that…to this day…his partner’s wife was having a really hard time dealing with the loss and that it has severely undermined her faith in God. I don’t know these people very well, but I can certainly understand how suffering such a loss would make one question God’s love. It’s a question that I have always struggled to understand, until I read a book called “The Shack”.

“The Shack” is the story of a loving father, Mac, whose young daughter was murdered. Her body was never found but her blood and clothes were found in a remote rural shack. Mac blamed himself for not being there to protect her and he was angry at God for not protecting her as well. He was depressed, bitter and engulfed with what he called “the great sadness” for many years…. until one day when he returned to the shack. There he met and spoke with God, one on one, who lovingly explained to him why bad things happen.

God told Mac, “I don’t make bad things happen and I don’t punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment. It’s not my purpose to punish it; it’s my joy to cure it. The problem for most people is that they try to make sense of the world based on a very small and incomplete picture of reality. It’s like looking at life through a tiny knothole of hurt and pain, seeing pain and death as ultimate evils and God as the ultimate betrayer and untrustworthy. The real underlying flaw with that thought process is that you don’t realize I am good. If you knew I was good and that everything…the means, the end and all the processes of our lives…is all covered by my goodness, then while you might not understand what I am doing, you would trust me. But you cannot produce trust just as you cannot ‘do’ humility. It either is or is not. Trust is the fruit of a relationship in which you know you are loved. And Mac, trust me…. you are truly loved.”

I have had some really bad things happen in my life as well. And I suppose I have even questioned God’ goodness myself at times. But ultimately I believe that God is good and that while bad things may happen sometimes, in the end there will be an awesome reward!

 

Although the world is full of suffering,

it is also full of the overcoming of it.

                                  ~ Helen Keller