THERE’S MORE, NOT LESS, MORE
Disease and death are so ugly and brutal. Maybe a terminal ward
where everyone is a little child has an added pathos. Because I believe
that every little child anywhere in
the world is a servant of God I find consolation in knowing that however
things appear there’s more in it than meets the eye and when the world
is better we’ll clap our hands over our mouths in enlightened
astonishment.
Like everyone else it guts me to see them suffer and die.
The raging fever is real, the gasping for air is real, the incubators, straps, tubes, leads, needles, pumps, drips—they’re all real. The silent screaming, the wide-open mouths and the tiny toothless gums, the jerking, twisting, the shrill crying or the silent panting—all real.
There’s no point in denying the reality of all that!
But what if what we see is not all there is?
What if there’s more (not less!) to what we see than what we see?
Would you not want to be able to believe that there was more?
One day outside Jerusalem there was a young man hanging on the public gallows. The spit, the sweat, the blood, the jeers, the taunts, the treachery, the hypocrisy, the race hatred—all real. The thirst, the loneliness, the sense of abandonment, the grief of a mother and friends, the injustice, the evil—all real.
But there was more!
In all that—not simply after it—in and through all that there was more.
There wasn’t less than that! There was more!
John 12:31: SENTENCE WAS BEING PASSED ON THE WORLD! SATAN WAS BEING KICKED OUT!
In the Mel Gibson movie, Christ, badly beating, not allowed to sleep, falling one more time, His mother runs to Him and He says, “Look, mother, I’m making everything new.” Using Revelation 21:5.
Without denying a bit of the ugly and brutal in it there was the wondrous in it, paid for in enduring anguish and pain.
There is more in the disease and death of a child! Let’s not reduce the child to an object of pity. Sadness we should feel but we should learn from them.
It speaks profound truths to the world, into which we have brought anguish, agony and loss, and what it says is said to us at a heartbreaking cost!
And what does it say?
Like everyone else it guts me to see them suffer and die.
The raging fever is real, the gasping for air is real, the incubators, straps, tubes, leads, needles, pumps, drips—they’re all real. The silent screaming, the wide-open mouths and the tiny toothless gums, the jerking, twisting, the shrill crying or the silent panting—all real.
There’s no point in denying the reality of all that!
But what if what we see is not all there is?
What if there’s more (not less!) to what we see than what we see?
Would you not want to be able to believe that there was more?
One day outside Jerusalem there was a young man hanging on the public gallows. The spit, the sweat, the blood, the jeers, the taunts, the treachery, the hypocrisy, the race hatred—all real. The thirst, the loneliness, the sense of abandonment, the grief of a mother and friends, the injustice, the evil—all real.
But there was more!
In all that—not simply after it—in and through all that there was more.
There wasn’t less than that! There was more!
John 12:31: SENTENCE WAS BEING PASSED ON THE WORLD! SATAN WAS BEING KICKED OUT!
In the Mel Gibson movie, Christ, badly beating, not allowed to sleep, falling one more time, His mother runs to Him and He says, “Look, mother, I’m making everything new.” Using Revelation 21:5.
Without denying a bit of the ugly and brutal in it there was the wondrous in it, paid for in enduring anguish and pain.
There is more in the disease and death of a child! Let’s not reduce the child to an object of pity. Sadness we should feel but we should learn from them.
It speaks profound truths to the world, into which we have brought anguish, agony and loss, and what it says is said to us at a heartbreaking cost!
And what does it say?
