August 12, 2014
God is Good
My husband’s cancer is now
resistant to current treatment and he will soon begin an aggressive regiment of
radiation. Bill has had the cancer for 17 years and while none of the
treatments or side effects are pleasant, through it all we’ve told others, “God
is good.” I was somewhat taken aback
when a friend, a well-founded believer, recently responded (paraphrasing),
“Yes, I know all the answers; I know what the Bible says. But when two people
have the same cancer and one dies within a few short months and another is
spared, the family with loss doesn’t want to hear others saying God is good.” I
was just getting warmed up in a response when she cut the conversation short,
but I suspect that her sensitivity had less to do with others and more to do with
a personal loss. The reality is that regardless of the circumstance, whether life or death, suffering or healing, long or short lived — God is still
good. “When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the
mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death
has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your
victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”” (1Cor 15:54-55 NIV)
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Gail;
-----I don’t mean this to hurt you or anyone else. But I mean it because it’s true. I don’t think people like to hear it. But it’s still true. Everything born dies. Everything sprouting from a seed dies. No physical body of this world is without a dying process, even those who may be raptured at His return; their bodies cease to be as they were, which ceasing is death, concurrently with becoming what they will be. And God is yet good because everything means something to everything else. Like everyone’s life is particularly unique, especially as viewed by God, everyone’s death is particularly unique. Like everyone’s life adds to the story of reality, so also does everyone’s death.
-----Recently a young lady was having quite a quandary with naming her soon to be born son. The dad always had offered strange, cockamamie names. This occasion would form up the same, but with a twist of curiosity in the name he offered: Azrael. Her mind turned this offering over and over, because it was indeed very different, sounded a bit dignified, was really desired by the dad, but was the name of the death angel. I’m not sure if that meant The Grim Reaper’s name is Azrael. She was sure it was creepy all the same.
-----When she came to me seeking advice I studied the name’s etymology and discovered that it was a later alteration of the earlier, actual name of this angel: Azriel. As believers but not studiers are apt to do, the twisters of this name also twisted the character of its namesake. Azrael was sinister. But Azriel means “help of God”. Interestingly conflicted name for a death angel!
-----Until you think about it for a moment. What a miserable place and condition this present world would be to experience eternally. Just think, eternal difficulties, eternal risks, eternal mistakes, errors, deceits, and eternal beheadings by an eternal black clothed, black hooded, Arabic KKK threatening to turn the entire world into their eternally evil and bloody playground. Wonderful!?
-----No. Death is a very dear friend. For someone who spits in God’s face, it might bring on Azrael. But those who love the Lord encounter Azriel. And aside from rushing death, because haste makes waste, contemplating it with the embrace due it prepares a beauty for the moment God has readied for it. In that contemplation is the fact that our minds are short of the observational capacity to see into all other minds, where even fleeting sparks of thoughts begin mental paths through orchards of fruit to treasures in the end when blazed with the Lord. In God’s mind everything is interrelated with everything else for the production of impeccable and eternal good. He knows how to best squeeze lemons. So the angels rejoice at the deaths of those who love Him, not because they are macabre, but because death is a doorway provided by God‘s grace.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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