Till We Are Home

Ah, Utopia.

A perfect life. A perfect world where all our days are just…perfect. 

No conflict. No squabbles. No pain. 

We’re all searching for that, aren’t we? We deserve to keep getting promotion after promotion. We shouldn’t receive calls from debt collectors, but our coffers should be full of abundance simultaneously while our homes full of all the fine things we want. And, shouldn’t our churches fill us with all the joy and knowledge of God without the fusses of conflict and questions about each other’s intentions or decision-making?

We hate pain. We hate the intrusion of detours to our perfectly made schedules. And, forget about those nasty diagnoses from Dr. So-and-So…I definitely don’t need to face that today. I don’t have time for dealing with sicknesses or other people’s “problems”, and please don’t mess up my already planned out life…it just won’t do.

Wouldn’t it be nice to find that our lives could be full of the “good stuff” and none of the bad? That, for once, our day would go the way I want it without someone or something coming along and messing it all up? 

Wouldn’t it be nice to get the respect I deserve? 

Well, ok…maybe that’s a bit too much to expect. I can roll with some minor inconveniences, you know, just some small issues here or there. But, only as long as I don’t face anything that would crush me flat. Other people are more apt to handle those life-altering circumstances than I am anyways. 

Yet, who can say they don’t face some, if not all the above? Whose life truly is a Utopia? 

I’ll go out on a limb here and say…no one. 

And, I think I have biblical warrant for thinking so. Take Romans 8:22 which says, “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.” Why is the whole of creation groaning? It groans because of sin. It groans because Creation was subjected to sin and the disastrous results that our sin wrecked upon its “good” verdict. 

So, we live in a world wrecked by sin.

And, as a result, pain comes to all of us. 

But, wouldn’t it be nice if God at least let us Christians off the hook? I mean, we’re adopted into the family of God, so wouldn’t it be nice if, as His family members, He’d be like, “it’s ok, you don’t need to face the atrocities of this world”? I mean, if I had all the power in the world…if I were omnipotent like God, wouldn’t I spare my children pain? 

And, you know what…I’ve even asked God this. God, I know You are omnipotent…why won’t You take this pain from me? Am I not Your son? Don’t You love me enough to take this away? 

He didn’t, by the way. I still walked through those painful experiences. 

So, ok, maybe the pain still comes. But, how about if after experiencing those difficult providences, He’d at least take them away and let me just “move on”? Like, maybe I could walk through those for a little bit, “learn my lesson”, then the painful experience would be removed – poof! – like it never existed and instantly my happiness and jolly would return. 

But, that doesn’t happen either. Could He though? Probably…I mean, He is God. And, He’s all powerful. So, why not?

Yet, that’s not the normal way God works. Instead, I find that God works in ways that I don’t always fully understand. I’m learning that though these painful experiences are not removed, let alone prevented from happening, He’s teaching me something altogether different.

It’s not the absence of pain in our life that we need. Instead, what we really need is the nearness of God in the midst of our pain. 

Our painful experiences in life teach us that we don’t need experiential bliss in this world we live in. We don’t need our coffers full. We don’t need our shelves full. We don’t need Superman health. No, instead, we…need…God. 

There’s this great Latin phrase Post tenebras lux, or After darkness, light. What an amazing phrase, right? 

We hear from the Bible that, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:5) And, John 8:12 says, “Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’”

This phrase helps us understand that God brings light in darkness. In fact, I think God delights to bring light to the darkness we face. The light He brings is Himself, it’s Jesus in the midst of the valleys we walk through.

Some of us have lifelong pain or remembrances of pain. Some find themselves in and out of seasons of darkness. What these all demonstrate is that we need God Himself. In the midst of our pain, in the darkness, we don’t need freedom from that season or pain…instead we need God. We don’t need Utopia when we can have something better than Utopia.

Our days on this earth will come with pain. It’s just the way things are. But, don’t wish that pain to just go away…instead ask God to turn on the light…beg and plead that He would bring His nearness in the midst of the pain…

Till we are home…