What Do You Say?

Some reflections of an 81 year old man whose 55 year old daughter's body died yesterday of cancer.

In my regular Bible reading I came today to Luke 18. The first verse says, “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.” His apostle Paul later wrote “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17) and “Pray in the Spirit at all times with all kinds of prayers, asking for everything you need. To do this you must always be ready and never give up.” (Eph 6:18ff)

How do you “never give up” when what you and hundreds of others prayed for does not happen and what you prayed against does?

For me, the answer lies in recognizing that I am not God. That his ways and thoughts are not my ways and thoughts. His are said to be “higher.” Even by human standards, my knowledge and insight are extremely limited.

Hebrews 11 is a chapter that famously recounts Bible heroes of faith and it concludes, “³⁹ These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, ⁴⁰ since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.”

Do I get that? Even what they were promised they did not live long enough to see fulfilled. We like to tell God how and when he should fulfil his promises, but often we do not have the capacity know or see how “all things are working together for the good of those who love God.” 

In the same chapter 18 of Luke’s gospel (as in other places in the gospels) we read, “³¹ Jesus took the Twelve aside and told them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. ³² He will be delivered over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him and spit on him; ³³ they will flog him and kill him. On the third day he will rise again.”

³⁴ The disciples did not understand any of this. Its meaning was hidden from them, and they did not know what he was talking about.” 

Even after he was mocked, insulted, flogged, crucified and rose again just as he said– they did not get it while it was happening before their very eyes.

I often have occasion to remind myself of the words of 1 Corinthians 13, “For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”