I just got through sharing this past week with a couple of bereaved parent support groups on the topic of “Bringing our child with us into a New Year”.
We talked about how time is tricky once a child goes to Heaven.
In the course of our conversation, I talked about Psalm 139:16.
I know for some parents it brings tremendous comfort.
For others, it feels like the plainest interpretation (in English, at least) is that God ordained our child’s death and that feels cruel.
For what it’s worth, after consulting as many different translations as I could find and looking up key words in a concordance, this is how I think about that verse.
God is outside time. That’s why the Bible says Jesus “was slain from the foundation of the world”.
Yet we know, historically, that Jesus’ death occurred on a specific day in human history. When the Son of God came as the Son of Man and took on flesh, He was as much a prisoner of time as we are. That is why He wept with Mary and Martha at the death of Lazarus.
It’s not that God ordained my son’s death, it’s that He knew precisely when it would occur. If my son had not left his apartment that night and driven his motorcycle too fast in a curve, I do not for one minute think God would have sent a lightning bolt to end his life because it was “his day to die”.
Our lives are laid out before Him from birth through eternity and nothing is a surprise to Him.
He knows the end from the beginning.
And yet…He has also given us free will.
He has created a world in which biology, physics, and other natural laws prevail.
Sin has marred that creation and so bad things happen. Sometimes the bad things are a result of cells that grow out of control or body parts that don’t function properly. Sometimes the bad things are due to the sin of others or ourselves. Sometimes the bad things are “acts of nature”.
Death is not God’s will for any of us but it is something we must bear because of sin. Thankfully, for those who are in Christ Jesus, physical death is not the final word!
I do not understand this even as I type it.
It’s a mystery that I’ve learned to live with every day (some days it’s easier than others!).
Still, I am more comforted by a God I cannot fathom and Who is all-knowing, all-powerful and all-loving than I would be with a god I could fit into a box of my own making.
On the hard days, I have to remind my heart of that truth.
You can find my list of ways to keep our children close throughout the year here: https://www.heartacheandhope.org/_files/ugd/fc3456_9e8a535f36bd454a94e25872be82dec2.pdf
thelifeididntchoose 