Jesus Wept

He was dead at the age of 11, our precious grandson, David Nye. How could that be? He was so active, so much a vital part of this family consisting of Mom, Dad and four sons (but two weeks away from adding a beautiful daughter, and another two years away from the birth of a second equally beautiful daughter). It was sudden. It was shocking. David’s brothers had been suffering with the flu that cold, late February 2007, and he had all the symptoms. Doctors and nurses assured David’s mother that he no doubt had the flu, also, and it was not necessary to bring him in for an examination. But on that fateful, final night of his so-short life, David became disoriented. His Dad, with the eldest son, Anthony, a 14-year-old teenager at that time, whisked David up and headed for the closest emergency room.

Anthony would later testify that David died in his arms on the way to the hospital on the southside of Indianapolis. From there, he was rushed to Riley Hospital for Children, where doctors determined that David had succumbed to a ruptured appendix. My last and heart-rending picture of David in the hospital was with his mother in the hospital bed with him, the two of them as close as close could be. As I write this, I do so with tear-filled eyes. I had begged God on the way to the hospital to please let me take whatever sickness David had, and if need be let me die rather than him. Racing through my mind were a thousand questions, as I asked myself whether God was dealing with me through David.

Sixty years earlier, my mom and dad had experienced the same hopeless feelings. Their 11-year-old son, my brother Teddy, had gone swimming one August afternoon with his cousin on the farm where he and a sister had spent the night with their aunt and her family. Teddy said he could swim, though he probably never had the opportunity to learn how to. On that fateful day in a creek that ran through the farm, just outside of Douds, Iowa, Teddy got into a hole that, with swift currents pulling at him, he could not get out of. His 8-year-old sister watched in horror from the creek bank, and the trauma of it all impacted her life from then until she met Jesus just a couple of years ago. So, our family had already tragically lost an 11- year-old boy, just as he was about to bloom into full-blown youth.

How do you handle such awful tragedies that come so shockingly and so suddenly? My parents had professed Christ as Savior but were attending a liberal, mainline denominational church, where they had not grown in their faith. After this loss, they moved to Ottumwa, Iowa, and began to seek God, trying one church after another. One Sunday afternoon, a neighbor knocked on their door and invited them to attend church with them. They did so that evening, and they heard a faithful pastor preach a Bible message. It required only one visit for them to know that this was “the end of their search for a Bible Church.” I trusted Christ soon thereafter, at the age of five, and grew up under the sound of good Bible teaching, as did our entire family. My folks spoke sparingly of that dark day when their son lost his life; but they were never in doubt, the rest of their days, that God was not taken by surprise when Teddy was called to heaven, and they testified that God used that sorrowful separation to bring our family to Himself.

Every family handles these sudden, shocking losses differently. It is safe to say, though, that families grounded in truth and faith have the spiritual resources to grieve and mourn their loss, which is absolutely necessary, without losing their spiritual equilibrium. It is without doubt a soul-trying test. The grieving does not last a couple of days or weeks or months. But, daylight will come even as joy does come after a night of weeping. The process must not be denied, and the prolongation of it differs with each person. The promises of God become more precious and one’s knowledge of, and relationship to, the eternal God—whose everlasting arms are never absent—deepens to a depth that one has never known before. Friends are loved for their caring concern, their gracious words, and their loving deeds. But at the end of the day, it is the Word of God—His absolute promises and pledges, that He will never leave you nor forsake you and that “all things work together for good to them that are the called according to His purposes,” (Rom.8:28)—that will give you the strength to go to bed with the resolve to get up the next morning and do whatever is your responsibility to do.

So, yes, we sorrow, but not as those who have no hope. (I Thess. 4:13 ) We look and long for the day of His coming back, as He said He would: “I go to prepare a place for you; and if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again to receive you unto myself that where I am there ye may be also.” (John. 14: 3) That’s good enough, dear God! And we cling to, and cherish, the promise that we shall be caught up “together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” (I Thess. 4:17)

“Wherefore, comfort one another with these words.” (I Thess. 4:18 )

I believe that everyone who reads this post has lost a child, a parent, a sibling, a spouse, a life-long friend through death. You each have dealt with death differently. Some may have at first slipped into denial; into doubting (God’s goodness); disbelief; into depression; or into simply an extended paralysis of the soul and spirit. But your confidence in the Word of God alone; your clutching by faith to the hope of heaven; and the ultimate healing of your wounded spirit have buoyed you and brought you through to where you face today and tomorrow with a once-shaken but now steadfast confidence in His goodness, grace, and greatness.

He stood with you and by you in the darkest night. You remembered Mary and Martha, who wondered why Jesus had not answered their desperate call to come before their dearest brother died. And then those two words landed right in the middle of your despairing heart, “Jesus wept.” And He wept with you, too, time and again. And the darkness gave way to dawn, and your soul found its resting place in the heart of Jesus, Lord and Savior.

“O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (I Cor. 15:55-57)