As the family of Haven Brooke McCarthy struggles with how their six-year old could be taken from them so suddenly, no words could describe how they must feel. No words can be said that will take the pain away. She was her daddy’s princess, a role that most young girls play in the eyes of their father. No more homemade cheers will ring though their house as often was the case living with Haven. No more love letters written with crayons to put on the refrigerator door. No more cheesy but priceless vacation Bible church projects to come home to her parents.
We call death a loss for good reason. There are so much that we lose other than the loved one when death shadows comes on our famlies. The empty feeling found inside is real, for a part of us is now gone. Even when it is not our own child, as parents we must try to place our own selves in the McCarthy family shoes, and understand a small portion what it must be like if we were to lose our princess.
If I did not believe with my whole heart that God was in control of all things, I could not make sense of life. Death hurts when it hits home like nothing else. This is a very difficult burden for anyone to bear. All of us who have lost someone dear to us where the loss was unexpected and premature have a certain amount of regret and unfulfilled expectations that inevitably produce much emotional pressure. It becomes an extreme test of faith to be sure.
Rom 5:12
12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
13 (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.
14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.
The fall of mankind into sin has had lasting effects on this world. God created a world of wonder and beauty, a world at peace and harmony. As we read frequently in the first two chapters of Genesis, “… it was good.” But then Adam and Eve sinned. From that point on in time, ugliness, chaos, and devastation have been the rule of the day. No longer does the description “good” seem to fit in our fallen world.
Everything that man touches, man corrupts, including the splendor of the salvation that God has provided in Jesus Christ. The sorrow of death is but the greatest part of this corruption. But get this…God in his divine wisdom and plan took death and turned it around for his own purpose. God turned the curse and death of Christ on the cross into the cure for sinful man.
John 14
1Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.
2In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.
4And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.
5Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?
6Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
Jesus was celebrating the Passover with His disciples, just before His death. In this “upper room discourse,” found only in John’s Gospel, Jesus gives us, along with His disciples, a whole new outlook on death. He had just told His disciples in chapter 13 that He would be betrayed by one of them and that He would die. He further told them that where He was going, they would not be able to come for a while.
The disciples were greatly distressed. To them, the death of our Lord was the end, not the beginning. They began to feel the loss of Him, though death had not yet come. They knew His death was the cause for their separation from Him. No wonder they had always struggled with His words about His coming death. No wonder Peter would rebuke our Lord for talking of death. To them, death was the curse, the cause of a separation they did not want.
What they did not yet understand was that in the wisdom of God, the curse was also to be the cure. Jesus comforted His disciples in this discourse by telling them these two things
(1) Though physically absent from them, He would be present with and in them through His Spirit. They would, in His absence, enjoy an even greater intimacy and union with Him. He would not be with them, but He would be in them. This was even better!
(2) His death, though the cause of a temporary separation, was the cure for a permanent separation.
Death was the curse, the penalty for sin. Death is separation from God. But when our Lord died, He endured that separation. When He died, He died to sin as well as for sin. Our Lord’s death was the means whereby sinners could live in eternal fellowship with God. Our Lord’s going was not to “build a place” for His disciples in heaven but to prepare a way for them to get to heaven. He was the way, and His death and resurrection were the means.
These disciples, who resisted hearing of our Lord’s death before His crucifixion and resurrection, were the same men who celebrated His death afterwards. We celebrate the death of our Lord every week in our church because God took the curse and made it the cure. No wonder Paul could speak of death in terms of hope and joy. For those who are in Christ, death does not separate us from God; it joins us with Him.
Philippians 1:19-21
For I know that this shall turn out for my deliverance through your prayers and the provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, according to my earnest expectation and hope, that I shall not be put to shame in anything but that with all boldness, Christ shall even now, as always, be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
2 Corinthians 5:6-9
Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord—for we walk by faith, not by sight—we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. Therefore also we have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him.
Romans 8:31-39
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, “FOR THY SAKE WE ARE BEING PUT TO DEATH ALL DAY LONG; WE WERE CONSIDERED AS SHEEP TO BE SLAUGHTERED.” But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I cannot imagine anything more difficult than the loss of a child. In death like all other things we must seek God's counsel and God's comfort. For as His children we have as our heritage a consolation and comfort that is more than sufficient for any test, for any trial, and for any loss, no matter what the world tells us, or even what our hearts tells us, for God is greater than our hearts and He is the strength of our hearts forever.
At our own death when this earthly veil is lifted, we will understand some meanings of events that came in our life, among other things that it is only in this life, in this mortal body, that our knowledge and vision are limited. Therefore I feel safe in saying that what I know from scripture is that in the death of a believer, it will not be a case of limitation or of needing to grow the way we do on this earth, but of unlimited blessing and knowledge and joy beyond anything we can now even properly conceive of.
There is no hope found in death, save the hope we find in Christ’s death.