Is everything sad going to become untrue?” Prayers for Oklahoma

ValMay ♦ May 21, 2013 ♦ Leave a comment

Is everything sad going to become untrue?”

A few years ago my husband, Larry, read Tim Keller’s book ‘The Reason for God’ and I wanted to share some of his thoughts from the book on suffering as it relates to the joy of heaven. In light of the recent tornadic devastation in Oklahoma, I think it is a thought worth pondering. Our hearts go out to those who’s lives have been turned upside in a moment – for those yesterday in Oklahoma and for those who have suffered in past disasters. This earth is not the right place and when things like this happen, we are reminded of that. I am so thankful the Lord is with us through all of life and for the promise of LIFE whole and complete after our life here is over.

Keller’s Biblical view of the resurrection is that it is not a ‘consolation’ of the life that we never had, but a ‘restoration’ of the life that we always wanted. Resurrection means that every horrible thing that has ever happened will not just be undone and repaired, but will some how be brought to an even greater joy… an even greater glory. In other words, we will not just be consoled in Heaven but ‘all things will be reconciled and brought to a joy and glory that ‘hath not entered into the hearts of man’.

In the ‘Lord of the Rings’, Samwise Gamgee discovers that his friend Gandalf was not dead as Sam had thought but alive, and he cries, “I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself! Is everything sad going to become untrue?”

Christianity answers that question with a loud and emphatic…. yes! Everything sad is going to become ‘untrue’ and somehow reconciled to be made into an even greater glory!

C.S. Lewis said this ……. “they say of temporal suffering, no future bliss can make up for it, not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work ‘backwards’ and turn even that agony into a glory”.

Working ‘backwords’ and becoming ‘untrue’…. all to His Glory. Hallelujah!! I like the thought.

I’ll finish with an excerpt from a passage that so eloquently describes the hope and the joy that is set before us in arriving at that place that He has gone to prepare for us.

“I will rise again…….. the earth will recede and the heavens open up and I shall see the Son of Glory.
And when you see me again, I will be seated at His feet basking in a brilliance that outshines that of a thousand suns …. yet, it will but gently warm my face. And when I see the Ancient of Days .. He that hath no morning .. never began; He that hath no evening.. never will end, I will remember this, no man on earth hath seen the face of God and lived. Yet, until I saw His face, I never knew what it meant to live at all.

“Until I saw His face, I never knew what it meant to live at all”

Amen and to His Glory!

by Larry May