Ask Steve:
Devastated by friend's death
"Our church has spent the last nine months
praying for one of the most wonderful people
I’ve ever known. Last year, at the age of 40,
she was diagnosed with cancer. We prayed,
she prayed, we fasted and believed God would
cure her. But he didn’t. She died last month.
She leaves behind two children who need their
mum, a husband who needs his wife, and a
church congregation and wider community
who are devastated. How do we recover from
something that has caused many of us to feel
crushed? And how do we rebuild credibility
with our local community who all knew how
much we prayed for healing?"
A few years ago a friend of mine had a very aggressive form of cancer. I prayed for her every day for more than a year, as did her entire church. But she died. And, just like you do at this moment, we all felt crushed.
The Bible teaches us that prayer is ‘powerful and effective’ (James 5:16) and calls us to pray for those who are sick. It’s filled with stories of those who were healed as a result of God’s miraculous intervention. So when we cry out in pain and God seems to ignore us, it raises huge questions.
Why are our hopes, longings and prayers so often dashed? Why is healing all too rare? Even in New Testament times, a ‘miracle’ was just that; something exceptional, something unusual, something which broke with the normal experience of everyday life and its struggles.
There will always be those who insist that ‘Nothing happens that is outside of God’s will.’ Using this as their starting point, they will seek to explain the tragedy of the death of your friend through the use of those common ‘pastoral’ clichés ‘It was her time’ and ‘The Lord was calling her home’. But, not only do these have a desperately hollow ring, I don’t think they reflect the teaching of the Bible or the attitude of Jesus himself. Jesus’ big prayer: ‘Our Father…your kingdom come’ is clear. It’s a longing. It is as yet, an unfulfilled future hope.
1 John 3:8 declares: ‘The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.’ And the New Testament writers are agreed – Christ’s victory over Satan is decisive; the war has been won. But they are also clear that though the final outcome is assured, for the moment, the battle continues.
The New Testament teaches what our common sense demonstrates to us – the kingdom of God is both here and not here, both present and future. Although this does nothing to remove the pain of losing a friend, or any other tragedy, attached to it is God’s ultimate promise that there will come a day when, at last, there will be no more pain, or suffering, or death (Revelation 21:1-5). The day when the universe – the heavens and the earth – will finally be made new.
There is a popular song, written by Chris Tomlin, called ‘Indescribable’. I enjoy singing it. But first insisting that God is ‘all powerful’, the lyrics of the second verse then open up with the line, ‘Who has told every lightning bolt where it should go.’ I have to say that I don’t think that this makes for either good theology or a particularly pastoral approach.
In a world filled with tragedy and pain we have to be very careful about the language we use. We have to be clear about what we mean when we say that God is in control when a community has been thrown into mourning.
In the situation you find yourselves in, what do you do? Sit down together. Talk together. Be honest together. Be angry together. Be broken together. Allow yourself to cry together. Faith isn’t a blanket that we are asked to attempt to conceal the pain of reality with.
As far as rebuilding your credibility with the wider local community is concerned, do exactly the same. They are grieving with you. There is, perhaps, nothing so compelling as the mix of openness and vulnerability combined with a faith that, in the end, through all the pain can still say, as Paul said to the church in Rome: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’
Watch Steve discuss this question in more depth at
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