Death, What sting do you bring?

What is this idea of pain, grief and loss in our lives?
It is often the hardest question to answer as a Christ follower.


Why would a God full of love, grace and tenderness allow a world of heartbroken people go unanswered to?
If you say God's heart breaks along with our humanity, who's hearts shatter daily, than why doesn't He intervene?


I was reading the Clive Staples blog and came across a post on Lewis's thoughts on why we are (what feels like) subscribed to experience such pain.


"While what we call 'our own life' remains agreeable we will not surrender it to Him. What then can God do in our interest but make 'our own life' less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible source of false happiness?" -Lewis


"God wants to give us something, but cannot, because our hands are full- there's nowhere for Him to put it." - Augustine


Our perspective is skewed. Our view on beauty and true happiness is flawed.
We so constantly fill our lives with these things that we believe will bring us purpose, will bring us depth, will bring us happiness. Things that in and of themselves are not necessarily bad, but they are shallow and meaningless in the big picture of what God has intended. 
We expect God to give us all that we ask for, and question him when we feel he doesn't, but in the mean time we are distracted with filling our hands with as much as we could possibly carry, and remove any room He would have to reach us. 
We can all admit to wanting something greater for our lives, to belong to a purpose, and to give reason for our existence. So than what do we do to surrender those things so God may shape our lives into what He intended? What does it look like? 


I heard an interesting thought as I sat in on a lecture at Augustine College yesterday ..."If your job or your ambitions are going to keep you from the Sabbath, quit that job and give up those ambitions."
This thought is so completely counter cultural. Everything in our culture tells us to have purpose we must produce something, we must strive for something, we must be something.
But what does it mean if we gain it all, but lose our time with the Divine?
If your job gets in the way of you spending time with the Divine...quit.
Really? ...
Why not? ...

There really is no Meaning, no Beauty, and no Peace outside of Him...so what do our lives consist of if we exclude Him? 


Lewis actually suggests that if we don't voluntarily surrender, He may allow us to experience things that will bring us to a place of surrender and dependency. 


We have to be careful with this thought though. This doesn't mean that God just takes away fro those that are getting it wrong in life and are filling themselves with distractions; if that was the case those distracted with wealth wouldn't get richer and the wicked wouldn't prosper, but that never seems to be the case. No, the truth is that God allows a universal perspective alteration to a global community that is distracted and who's perspectives are on all things apart from Him. We need to change our mind frame. This is not punishment; this is an act of love. It occurs so we may see the truth with clarity and find pure, real happiness.



It is true that with the limited perspective of fragile humanity it is nearly impossible to explain why. Why these things happen in our lives and in the world around us. But life, faith and the journey is about trust. Trusting in the promise God made that all would be restored in the end, and that the pain we carry is for a greater cause. Our happiness is so shallow and so weak from one moment to the next, and God is trying to fill our spirits with his infinite Joy and remove the extra, so that our contentment isn't based of our ever-swinging human emotions. 


I will chose to trust that I will be well pleased in the end, despite the things that I now do not understand.