Jeff Bezos has accumulated a net worth of some $27.2 billion dollars. Good news for him and his circle of influence, but bad news for his competitors. Bezos was the founder of Amazon.com and its amazing growth and success have made him uber wealthy, but has eliminated more than one mom and pop bookstore and other specialty retailer, bringing financial ruin and devastation to their once happy homes.
What’s good for one can devastate another!
Ahhh . . . such is life. I was thinking last night that this is similar to the death of a born again believer and follower of Jesus Christ. I’m always torn when I go to the funeral of someone who loved the Lord with all of their heart, because I know they are reaping the rewards of their faith and I want to celebrate their good fortune of attaining eternal life as described in the Bible, but the incongruity and satire of this scenario is that simultaneously I will be sad and grieving and missing my friend or family member immensely, and the biting melancholic wretchedness of it supersedes most of the happiness that I receive from knowing that they are in heaven where they no doubt are already touring their new home.
I try and try to remind myself that they will have already arrived in paradise where there will be no more sorrow, grieving, sadness, sickness, suffering, pain, sin, death, or violence and the lion will be lying down with the lamb and eternal peace, joy, and love will have already begun to reign for them throughout eternity in a place where there are never any tears.
But what about ME?
I’m gonna miss them!
It’s a paradox, oxymoron, illogicality, enigma, contradiction, ironic puzzle and inconsistency, but most of all it’s an absurdity to flesh, How can something that hurts me so much be so good for them?
How can a God that loves us and is so good allow it to persist?
Hmmm . . . Good question and one that has confounded greater thinkers than I for eons,
I have observed in my Bible study that God doesn’t like it either. Consider the reaction that Jesus had when He learned of the death of His good friend Lazarus.
John 11:35, (the shortest verse in the Bible), put it in a context that anyone can understand: “Jesus wept.”
Jesus cried after speaking with Lazarus’ grieving sisters, Martha and Mary, and seeing all the mourners. That seems natural enough except that Jesus knew and in fact had traveled to Bethany to raise him from the dead. So one would think that Jesus would have the driest eyes in the crowd and would be enjoying joyful calm in that storm of mourning and distress surrounding Him, (perhaps even with a little knowing grin on His face).
But in fact He was “greatly troubled” at this news “When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.” (John 11:33).
Why? – Well for one thing because Jesus loves us and has compassion for us and doesn’t like death any more than we do. Make no mistake about it the calamity of sin and its wages death deeply grieve God.
Consider that ever since the fall of Adam and Eve he’d endured sin’s horrific destruction of His most cherished creation. Death had consumed every human being aside form Enoch and Elijah that he’d created. Lazarus was just another in a long line, and in His prophetic wisdom He knew it would take him again before it was all over. Jesus shed tears of compassion for his friend; He shed tears of anger that sin had devoured him; and He shed tears of love that expressed His grief.
It’s impossible to know the mind of the Lord, but with His passion for Scripture I wonder if the following verse, (that would later be penned by Luke in 12:50), flashed through His mind as He contemplated His own impending death, ”I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished!”
I asked a guy the other day if he could have anything that he wanted in this life, what it would be. He responded “happiness, if I could just know happiness all of the time”. Unfortunately he will never know happiness in this life on a perpetual basis. The Bible makes it clear that there is a time to grieve, mourn, die, weep and endure other times of unhappiness in this fallen world, thus making his the impossible dream.
But take heart; all is not lost – He (and we) can know joy!
As Jesus prayed about His baptism of anguish on the cross in the Garden of Gethsemane he was so distraught that He actually sweated blood. But in spite of His distress Hebrews 12:2 tells us that at this precise moment He knew joy: Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross . . .
How could He possibly know joy as He endured the agony of the cross?
He saw that His own death would destroy the “last enemy” (death), and He was looking beyond this vapor of a life into eternity and seeing the manifestation of His reunification of those whom He loved who would follow Him and be reconciled forever.
So if you’re having trouble over the death, (or impending death) of someone you love,
(or maybe even facing your own impending demise sooner than later), emulate Jesus, go ahead and have a good cry as Jesus did, but endure by focusing on Jesus and the ultimate joy of our own glorious reunification in heaven with Him as we suffer through it as He suffered.
Psalm 30:5
“Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning”
Revelation 21:4
And when that morning comes, “death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore”
Revelation 22:1, 3-5
And He showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal,
flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb . . .
And there shall be no more curse,
but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it,
and His servants will serve Him;
they shall see His face, and His name
shall be on their foreheads.
And there shall be no night there;
they need no lamp nor light of the sun,
For the Lord God gives them light
and they shall reign forever and ever.
December 9, 2013 – Click here to listen