Children Are Not Supposed To Die

One fall, back when I was a student at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, five of us rode together from Minnesota back to the apartment we shared. It was a hot, muggy afternoon when we arrived. Someone suggested that we go swimming in the Missouri River. I merely went along for the drive, because I had never learned how to swim. When we arrived at a park along the river everyone except me dove in and began to swim around, splashing and laughing in the refreshing coolness. I puddled along the bank and watched.

Suddenly I heard David cry out something. He was maybe twenty-five feet out into the river in deep water. For a time he seemed to splash and thrash and then his head disappeared. I screamed at the others, "David, David, he went under! Help him!"

I remember feeling so very, very helpless. There was no boat, no lifeguard, no rope to throw to him, nothing. Vic and Wayne swam out to where he was last seen and began diving down, searching, hoping, but he was gone. We never saw him again until the police divers pulled his drowned body from the river.

David was from southern Minnesota. The next week those of us who had witnessed his drowning made the sad journey back from Missouri to Minnesota to attend his funeral. David's parents and his mother in particular were devastated by his death. For years after she kept his room exactly the way it was before he died. She could not let him go.

Many have said that the death of a child causes the most intense grief known. David was not supposed to die. He was well on his way to becoming a pastor. Suddenly that dream was all ripped away and with his death a part of David's mother and father also died. For a long time after they were disoriented and confused. Like so many parents they were forced to confront something extremely painful. They needed to deal with the overwhelming pain of his death and move on, but how? They also needed to keep his memory present. How can you do both?

When a child dies parents face a wide variety of issues as they deal with their grief. The process of grieving is complex. Though we all must grieve in our own way, the process of grieving will always include the so-called 7 stages of grief. These do not happen in a particular order and you may cycle back to any one of them again and again.

1. Shock and denial - It didn't happen. It couldn't have. This is a way to protect yourself from being totally overwhelmed, even though you're not consciously aware of why you feel this way. 
2. Pain and guilt - The pain is unbelievably deep and seemingly unbearable. Why did  I or why didn't I? . . . The temptation is to drown your sorrows and escape the pain with alcohol or drugs. 
3. Anger and bargaining - Others are at fault. Why me? If only I had . . . Oh, God, bring her back and I'll never . . . But that doesn't work either. What can I do? What?!
4. Depression and loneliness - Especially as you reflect on what has really happened. And then your friends try to talk you out of feeling so down. But you need time, time to yourself, time to focus on the past, to feel empty and to despair. 
5. The upward turn - Ever so slowly things become a little better, more organized. Your depression begins to lift. But even then you may drift back to an earlier stage. 
6. Reconstruction and moving on - Maybe, maybe you can deal with life without your child. Oh, you do not want to, but you must, somehow you must move on without him. 
7. Acceptance and hope - You begin to accept the reality. It happened. I can't change that, but he is in the hands of Jesus. We will meet again. My life will never, ever be the same, but I see now that there is a way forward. 

David's death touched each one of us in a different way, but none of us grieved in the way that David's parents did. In my next postings I'd like to look at some examples of parents grieving as recorded in the pages of Scripture and see what the Holy Spirit has to tell us about how to deal with this most painful reality. 

Christ's Secret Marriage Plan

These days we're exploring the mystery of marriage. Earlier I pointed you to the Genesis text (Gen. 2:24):

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh

Today I begin to unravel what the Apostle means when he says that this is a profound mystery and he is saying that it refers to Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:32). Paul frequently refers to mysteries. Earlier in Ephesians he writes:

• how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. ⁴When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, ⁵ which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit (Ephesians 3:3-5).
   
• To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, ⁹ and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in^[a] God who created all things, ¹⁰ so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places (Ephesians 3:8-10).

The gospel of Jesus Christ is a mystery revealed and made known to Paul and through him to us all.  

• Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages (Romans 16:25). 

Above all, the Apostle emphasizes that this mystery was not something he discovered by his research or science. It is a mystery unknown to mankind in all other generations. It was kept secret for long ages. All of Adam's descendants, like Adam in the garden at the beginning, were alone. However, this was not the same kind of loneliness as Adam experienced at the beginning when he was still secure within the Garden and spoke with God each evening. No indeed. This was a loneliness brought on by Adam's disobedience. From that time forward he and his kind were separated from God and excluded from the Garden. Moses writes, 

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
   and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
   ‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
   in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
¹⁸ thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
   and you shall eat the plants of the field.
¹⁹ By the sweat of your face
   you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
   for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:17-19)

And then the loneliness and separation began. 

"Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” ²³ therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. ²⁴ He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life" (Genesis 3:22-24).

What did the LORD God mean when He said, "the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil?" Surely He did not mean that Adam and his kind were not to develop moral judgments, the ability to distinguish good from evil. What then? We know that God knows good and evil. And we see that Adam did not have this knowledge until after his act of rebellion. As a result of gaining this knowledge the entire planet has been infected with suffering, pain and death. Adam and Eve now realize they are dust, earth and their bodies will now decay and return to the earth from whence they have come. 


Why this judgment? Because in claiming the right to decide what is good or evil, Adam has declared his autonomy. He has claimed to be God. Adam now makes the rules. Adam now decides what is good and what is evil. In so doing he has grievously erred. He is not God. He is Adam, created by God and made from the dust of the earth. He must learn this—and he will, at the cost of his life! 

"Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—"

The phrase, knowing good and evil, is used one more time in the Bible. 

"And as for your little ones, who you said would become a prey, and your children, who today have no knowledge of good or evil, they shall go in there. And to them I will give it, and they shall possess it" (Deuteronomy 1:39).  

The children of Israel had disobeyed the LORD God in the wilderness by refusing to go in when He commanded them. They allowed their fear to hold them back. They said that the Nephilim, giants, ruled there. Before them they were but grasshoppers. It was not possible. Consequently these disobedient people were excluded from entering the land (Numbers 13:25-14:45). Their children, who had not been part of the rebellion, were innocent. They had "no knowledge of good or evil"; consequently they were allowed to possess the land after 40 years when their parents had all died off.


Perhaps you can see where this is leading. The mystery revealed in Christ is that we, the children of Adam, are now reunited to our rightful husband, master and LORD in Christ. Through His innocent suffering, death and resurrection, we have been declared innocent and forgiven. We are no longer the disobedient sons of the first Adam. In baptism we are now united by faith to the second Adam (Romans 6:3-11; 1 Cor.15:21-22) We have become bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh, so that we say with Paul, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Galatians 2:20). This is the long-hidden, secret marriage plan. 


More on this next time. 

 

Living in the Land of Silence

Quite often I forget that I have the use of all my senses. For instance, I pay little or no attention to what it would be like not to be able to hear. My wife reminds me that I have indeed lost most of my hearing, especially when she wants to gain my attention. And it is true—I have a slight hearing loss, but nothing critical, at least from my viewpoint. Yet what would it be like, I wonder, to live all my life in "the land of silence"? What would it be like if I had never heard the birds singing in the early morning or the first words of my baby daughter or the dramatic sounds of Mozart's symphonies?

The psalmist writes, "If the LORD had not been my help, my soul would soon have lived in the land of silence" (Ps. 94:17). Without the help of the LORD he would become like a deaf person. This verse and those surrounding it seem to describe the land of the deaf, the land of silence—alone, afraid, filled with cares, surrounded by evil and wicked people. In this land no one speaks, sings, plays music, laughs, shouts with joy, yells in victory. All is silence.

In 1971 German film director Werner Herzog produced a documentary about a deaf-blind woman named Fini Straubinger. He follows her in the film as she visits numerous people in the deaf-blind community, people struggling to live with their disabilities. I commend to you clips from his film on YouTube. It is called The Land of Silence and Darkness ( Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit).

As you view these people, consider what it would be like for you. Learn the meaning of compassion and care for what they face. How can we assist them?

And consider again what the psalmist writes: "If the LORD had not been my help, my soul would soon have lived in the land of silence."