Living in the Mystery

Today marks four years since my late husband Jacob Fowler passed from this earth and into eternity. 
So much can happen in four years. 
So much has happened in four years.

Anniversaries like this are almost always grief-triggers. Around the time that June rolls around each year, my thoughts are directed more and more often to June 27th, 2011. I remember the sights, the sounds, the smells. I recall the shock, the numbness, and then the debilitating anguish of loss. I think often of the people who were by my side through all of that. Mostly I think about God, and about Heaven. What a place it will be, and what a disservice we do ourselves when we don't think frequently and intentionally and longingly of it! I think of the almost tangible closeness of God in those months following Jake's death- how "your Maker is your Husband" really made so much sense to me. How I clung to His Words in my loneliness, how I spoke with Him at an empty dinner table, how I cried to Him in the night. 

And a lot of times, I long for that closeness again. 

In retrospect I can see the great honor of having experienced deep intimacy with God early on in life. I thank Him for giving me experiences that can serve as markers of his faithfulness, that I can look back on throughout my life when things are difficult. 

This week, as I was traveling back from parents' home in the Tampa area, to Camp Kulaqua a couple hours North, I happened to catch a short bit of Nancy Leigh DeMoss's broadcast, "Revive Our Hearts," on the radio. She was talking about "How to Have a Quiet Heart," using Psalm 131 as her text, and one small phrase that she used lept out at me. I have been mulling it over in my mind all week. The wording she used was that a quiet heart is "content to live with mystery."

As Christians, there are many mysterious ways of God that we accept pretty willingly. God is three distinct persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and yet, "Hear O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is One." Jesus is fully God, and yet he is fully man. God is Sovereign, and yet men are responsible.
We are content with these mysterious truths because they are Biblical, and we trust therefore that they are true, even though we can not fully comprehend how they coincide. 

It becomes a little more difficult, however, when the mysteries of God's ways and plans begin to affect us on a more personal level, when the things He chooses for us baffle us. 

Content to live with mystery is not something we're very good at in our culture. We live in an age where answers to just about any question can be accessed in seconds, at the click of button, at the request of your smart phone. We like answers. We like to know why. We hate to wait. Anyone else fast-forward through the long, drawn-out, suspenseful part of a book or movie to get to the resolution? Or keep watching just one more episode on Netflix to see how things turn out for so and so? I am right there with you. 

But if there's anything I have learned in the last four years, it's that we can't know everything. Waiting is good. And God and His ways are mysterious.

With Kevin now employed in full-time ministry, I get a front-row seat to many people's pain and questions. People lose jobs, marriages, friendships, reputations, homes, spouses, and one of the first questions is usually, "Why?"  "Isn't there another way?" "Does God really love me if this is the kind of plan He has for me?"

Four years after my loss, the burden of those questions is much, much lighter. I have learned that knowing why will not bring me the comfort I crave, only knowing my Savior does that, and it just so happens that God already knew the exact set of circumstances that would help me to know my Savior best. Though I am at the point where I can truly thank God for allowing, and yes I believe ordaining this event in my life, I will never be so prideful as to suppose that I know just why He did it, or to think that I even should know why. I won't belittle God by thinking I can fully comprehend His ways or His plans, and I won't oversimplify Jake's life or death or make it trite by acting as if I can understand all the reasons for which God created him. That does not honor God and it does not honor Jake's memory either.

As for the question of, "Isn't there another way?" Jesus Himself asked that one as he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before His crucifixion, so I know I am not condemned for asking this very same thing, but I am also compelled by Jesus' final response. He submitted. Eventually, He knew this was the way the Father had ordained for Him to go, the only way by which God would accomplish His purposes, and he submitted. "Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours." I am both encouraged and challenged by Jesus' response here, that although it is human and acceptable to wonder in the face of pain, I must ultimately walk forward, in confident trust, in the path that God, my good Father, has clearly laid out for me.

Four years down that path that he laid out for me, I am embracing mystery much better. Initially I tried to give justification for my loss by putting a positive spin on everything. I was always pointing to good things that God was accomplishing through Jake's death, almost to the neglect of acknowledging the pain and brokenness that we experience in this world because of the curse of sin. I think in retrospect I was almost trying to defend God's actions towards me (as if God needs me to defend Him!). As I have gotten older, I see more and more that loss is not that simple. Pain and tragedy are not that cut and dry. There is a depth to God's sovereign plans for the world that we cannot fully understand with our feeble minds. There is pain that may always to us seem senseless. There are many tragedies that we will never in this life understand or see the good from. And this is important to acknowledge, because we must know that this does not negate the goodness of God. 

In the face of things that I cannot understand, I choose to worship God for His unsearchable ways, for His unfathomable wisdom! (Rom. 11: 33) Do I dare put Him in the wrong when tragedy strikes? Or condemn Him that I may be in the right?! (Job 40:8) 

I pray not. 

I don't want to worship a God that I can fully explain or understand. I worship a God who can see the good in things that I cannot, who can redeem anyone and any situation. I worship a God who brings beauty from ashes and healing from pain. He planned my life before the foundation of the world and knew my needs before time began. He loved me enough to provide His only Son, will He not also graciously give me all things (Rom. 8:32)? That is a God who is Mysterious- a God who needed nothing from me, and yet gave everything for me. Oh how I want to give my everything to Him. 

I went back and forth with how I would finish this piece, but I think the great hymn-writer William Cowper says it much better than I could:

1. God moves in a mysterious way
   His wonders to perform;
   He plants His footsteps in the sea
   And rides upon the storm.
2. Deep in unfathomable mines
   Of never failing skill
   He treasures up His bright designs
   And works His sov’reign will.
3. Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
   The clouds ye so much dread
   Are big with mercy and shall break
   In blessings on your head.
4. Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
   But trust Him for His grace;
   Behind a frowning providence
   He hides a smiling face.
5. His purposes will ripen fast,
   Unfolding every hour;
   The bud may have a bitter taste,
   But sweet will be the flow’r.
6. Blind unbelief is sure to err
   And scan His work in vain;
   God is His own interpreter,
   And He will make it plain.

Praise our Mysterious God,
His Grace Abounds, 
Even in the storm, 

Diana