Resources by Topic: Suffering and Evil

A few weeks ago I spoke at the services of my home church, Good Shepherd Community Church. The subject was what God has been teaching me about loss and grief since Nanci went to be with Jesus March 28. One of the most precious things about that weekend at my church was that I was able to share many profound insights from Nanci’s journals.

In order to understand God’s love in our current culture, it’s necessary to distinguish what love doesn’t mean and to see it in relationship to God’s other attributes. Yes, God is love, but it is not His only attribute, nor is it always His defining attribute. 

Isn’t it likely that a kind, all-powerful, and very compassionate God routinely prevents terrible tragedies in ways that we do not see and therefore do not credit as miracles? Perhaps one day we’ll hear those stories and marvel at how often God intervened when we imagined Him uninvolved in our world.

Your writing did not give me a clear picture of where you stand with Jesus. I understand that you believe in God. Have you surrendered your body and soul to Jesus and trusted in His once-for-all blood sacrifice on your behalf?

Here’s another precious insight from Nanci’s journal. One of the verses she shares, Jeremiah 17:8—the image of us being a tree with roots deeply planted in Jesus—is a favorite of ours.

God doesn’t only promise to replace our grief with joy, but to turn it into joy. Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy.”

I’ve mentioned that Nanci’s journal she kept over the last four years of her cancer contains many Charles Haddon Spurgeon quotes. A few months ago she wrote down some profound sentences from this sermon by Spurgeon, titled “Safe Shelter.” It seemed right to share more of it with you.

I write this on the one-month anniversary of Nanci’s homegoing. Strange to think that our true home is a place we’ve never been. Paul said, “I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far” (Philippians 1:23). Yet our eternal home will be on the New Earth where “no longer will there be any curse.”

Contemplating the final end of sorrow has brought me great comfort in my first month of grief after my precious wife’s death. I already can’t wait to see Nanci again and have her show me around Heaven, and then after the resurrection when we relocate to the New Earth, for us to both experience it for the first time together. How glorious that will be, and above all just to be with Jesus regardless of where!

God’s Word contains countless expressions of concern and anguish about the hard times people experience and the fact that they sometimes don’t feel God’s closeness. In this fallen world, “Why?” is a common question.

In October 2018, Nanci wrote in her journal that she was “above all, eternally thankful for the incredible growth in my heart spiritually. I honestly would not trade this cancer experience to go back to where I was—which wasn’t bad.”

In light of Nanci’s departure to be with Jesus four weeks ago, a kind sister reached out to me, saying she was hoping and praying that I felt the closeness of Jesus. I told her that I do indeed sense His closeness. At the same time, grief and sometimes depression come upon me in waves. But they do not drive out Jesus or the Holy Spirit, both of whom indwell me (Romans 8:8-11).

I usually don’t look for comfort from my own books—but when I set out a copy of 90 Days of God’s Goodness for a friend in need, I was thinking about Nanci and palpably feeling her absence. So I picked up the nearest book even though I’d written it, and the next thing I knew God had really touched me through the first six entries.

I appreciated this article by Jeremy Linneman, lead pastor of Trinity Community Church in Columbia, Missouri. He shares several quotes from J. I. Packer’s Knowing God, a book God has used in my life profoundly. It is still one of my top five books of all time.