Last week I was sitting with my mother in our local breast cancer care clinic. My mother suffered a major stroke four and a half years ago which has left her severely disabled. She is also fighting breast cancer for the second time. My mother loves Jesus, has served Him most of her life and is trusting Him for her healing. It is well with my mother's soul. However for me, the trials of life continually challenge my soul's wellness and as I sat next to my mother brooding on injustice and cruelty, I remembered a story about Jesus in the storm which I had spoken on at a conference, the story found in Matthew chapter 4.
This particular story has always fascinated me. I'm a light sleeper and when I say a light sleeper, I'm an irritatingly light sleeper, my husband says that I sleep like a cat because every slight sound wakes me. So the fact that Jesus could sleep when the wind and the waves were raging, baffles me.
It wasn't until I was preparing my talk and digging deeper into the story, that I realised why this story is so important. It isn't a story just about faith, it's also a story about how to face life's trials with hope. Jesus could sleep in peace because He wasn't worried about a storm when His Father had created the Heavens and the Earth, after all the wind and waves knew His name. He wasn't anxious, even if the storm had continued to rage and His Father hadn't intervened and calmed it. Jesus could sleep because whatever the consequence, whatever happened, He was confident of His future. Jesus knew that the best was yet to come and all one day would be well no matter what current horror He was experiencing. He understood the storm was the present but what was to come was eternal.
Years ago God gave me the promise that the best was yet to come. For many years, I thought the best would mean a husband (my first marriage ended and for a long time I was a single parent), I thought it would mean financial security or even good health, but no, although I do now have a great husband. I have come to realise that God's promise meant that He would give me His best not what I thought was my best. His best was hope in the hopelessness, love in the loneliness, acceptance in the rejection, joy in the despair, grace in the injustice, peace in the storm and the promise of a better day coming.
In the book of Daniel we read about three men, Meschach, Shadrach and Abednego. We read that these three men were being taunted by the King, Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar had decreed that whenever you heard any music you should bow down to his image but these three guys said 'no way, that's not happening. The only one we'll bow down to is our God.'
Nebuchadnezzar laughs at them and says, 'ha, I'll throw you into the pit, a blazing furnace what God can save you from my power then.' Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego reply to him, 'we don't need to defend ourselves to you, throw us into the fire, do your worst, bring it on. Our God can save us but even if He does not, nothing you do would make us bow down to you instead of Him.'
Even if He does not. For me, this is one of the most challenging statements in all of Scripture. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego knew that they may suffer one of the most awful agonies known to humankind, they knew that God could save them but He may not and because of what they had found and gained in Him, because they knew the hope of what lay ahead of them, they were willing to face that suffering.
Even if He does not. Even if He does not take our pain, even if He does not heal us, even if He does not intervene in our suffering? Even if He does not do we know what we have found and gained, are we able to hold onto God's promises and are we certain of the hope that lies ahead of us?
When life has cataclysmically crashed into me, I have tentatively whispered and sometimes unashamedly screamed into the darkness, 'if You are all You say You are and if all that is before me is the best, if the glory You promise is there, then I will try with every ounce of my being to trust that the best is yet to come and to believe that it is well with my soul.' Then as I've reached down deep inside myself and gripped as tightly as I can God's truth, God's best has penetrated my spirit. The words that Horatio G Spafford wrote in the hymn 'When peace, like a river' and more recently Kristene DiMarco & Bethel Music in 'It is well' have become so important to me, that 'it is well with my soul' is tattooed on my right arm, lest I ever forget.
When life strikes, God doesn't want us to act as if there is no loss or cost, He knows better than any of us the loss and cost of suffering. What He wants, what He aches for is for us to not lose sight of what we have found and gained in Him. If we can grasp tightly onto those things, albeit by our battle-scarred bleeding fingertips, then the best really is yet to come and it can be well with our souls for eternity.
