I Wish God would Fix Some Stuff

My wife and I were chatting the other evening after everything had settled down around Chalet du Henderson.  We weren't really chatting.  We were grieving.

There are two instances that we are involved in where people stepped out in faith for the sake of kids and orphan care and it has been hard.  Not like several layers of cardboard hard.  Not cement brick broken by the sensei hard.  Hard like cold-rolled steel, compressed, forged, dense, no-denting-is-possible hard.

Gut-punch hard.

I'm not belittling this for those who have experienced it physically, but something like torture-hard.

Ugh.

And my wife, ever the honest foil to my stoic preacher face, said, "I wish when people stepped out in faith like this, God would just work whatever miracle needs working so that they can raise this kid."

Yes.  I do too.  I wish God would fix some stuff.  I've got a list as a matter of fact.

But He hasn't, at least not yet.  They've prayed and things haven't shaken out like we all asked.  They've believed and the mountain remained.  They've walked forward to find the Red Sea still very much in place.  And wet.  And muddy.

And I was thinking about this as I preached this past Sunday.  I actually wrote it in my notes but left it out of the sermon.  So here's my thought:

When life continues to be hard, eschatology matters.  That's a big word for remembering that we're not at home here among this brokenness, that there is a life to come, and that there is a world coming that will be just, right, and miraculous.  Jesus will return and will set the world right.

Paul told the Thessalonians to "comfort one another with these words."

It seems that most eschatology that gets preached today is the Middle East, charts and graphs, and a few predictions thrown in for good measure.  It's predictive.  For Paul, it's pastoral.  He looks at a hurting people and says, "Read the end of the story.  Find comfort."

May it be for you and me and those we've been grieving with.  Amen.