The Comfort of God in a Hard Time
August 25, 2018 § 3 Comments
On August 19, 2018, Sam Leuellen, my 13 year-old nephew, took his own life. Sam had a deep and kind empathy for people that surpassed that of many of adults I have known. Perhaps he internalized the burdens of others too much; but his heartfelt kindness and sweetness are a benchmark I aspire to reach myself.
Sam without question loved and trusted Jesus, and even as I know there are answers that may never come in this life, I also know that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ those whom God has joined to his Son in his death and resurrection. Because this is true, the grace of God superabounded Sam’s sin and now he beholds his Savior in a glory where there is no more sadness or mourning. What follows is the comfort of God’s Word that I offered during Sam’s funeral service on Thursday, August 23, at Christ Presbyterian Church, in Nashville, Tennessee.
This is a hard time.
What an understatement. We often use understatements as a form of denial or as a way to deflect a larger reality that we are either unable or simple unwilling to deal with directly.
But in our case, saying, “This is a hard time,” is an understatement not because we are trying to deny or to deflect—but because none of us here, not even the best wordsmiths, can wrap what has happened in the first word that comes close to what has us all reeling.
It is a hard time because some of us ought instead to be finishing up our school day and getting ready for whatever comes next this afternoon.
It is a hard time because some of us ought instead to be sitting in a carpool line waiting for pickup.
It’s a hard time because some of us ought to be trying to stay focused in our cubicle or in our office, knowing Thursday will be over and then it’s finally Friday.
It’s a hard time because none of us should be here, not now—not ever.
That’s the way understatements work: They cannot possibly express the full reality of what is exploding in our hearts and minds.
On Sunday morning, after my wife had flown from Pensacola to Nashville and my kids and I attempted a few hours of sleep, we went to worship. I’m not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the way God drew my mind to what I believe is the most profound understatement made in human history:
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief…
Isaiah could not have known what he was saying, not only because these words prophesied what had not yet happened in history—God in the flesh stepping from eternity into time to live and die to fulfill the promise of redemption—but he also could not have known because no other human being than could possibly understand the grief and sorrow that our Savior knew.
But it is not our trying to understand what he experienced as a man of sorrows that is important—it is that he knows our sorrow and our grief that is important.
I am convinced that from the moment of his conception in Mary’s womb, our Savior began to sorrow and to grieve. When the Holy Spirit overshadowed her and the divine mystery of the incarnation became an enfleshed reality—our Savior began owning the very curse he had levied: “…in pain you shall bring forth children.” Whatever those pains are, Jesus was no mere bystander in their reality because he personally submitted to them as God the infant, God the child—even as he was at the same time upholding the universe by the word of his power.
As he grew, Jesus owned every suffering reality as he walked on the soil he had cursed. When Luke tells us that Jesus the boy grew in wisdom and stature, I believe he was not simply saying he was becoming a strapping young man—but that he was gaining a wisdom that only he could have, an accumulation along his life’s path of the heavy reality of the brokenness of sinful hearts, the vileness of human cruelty, and the deep sorrow of death’s blow.
Jesus cried to his Father as he did in the garden on the night of his betrayal because he had arrived there an already broken man: a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.
Jesus owned not just our sin, but also all of the consequences of the curse itself, bearing his own wrath in his own body, so that the raging, irrational horror of sin could be silenced with the words, “It is finished.”
This is a hard time.
We cannot know so many “whys.” Our minds spin, our hearts melt—why, why, why?
But surely because we can never know the depth to which our Savior suffered in both life and death we can also know that he knows far better even than we do that this is a hard time.
…he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
We turn to our Jesus because he has done the only thing that matters, he has owned our sin and borne its just judgment—and that itself is our hope, because as he lay down his life so he took it back it up again in glorious triumph:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
You must run there in your sorrow, run there in your grief. You must run there and trust him, because only he truly knows this is hard time—and only he knows the hard times that are coming. Only he knows—and only he has done what can be done.
Man of sorrows what a name
for the Son of God, who came
ruined sinners to reclaim:
Hallelujah, what a Savior!
When he comes, our glorious King,
all his ransomed home to bring,
then anew this song we’ll sing:
Hallelujah, what a Savior!
Roblog 
So sorry for your loss. And thanks so much for the reminders.
Rob- Thank you for sharing. Our hearts have been so heavy for your family. We will continue to pray for Sam’s mother, father, brother and all. Much Love, Jane and Kyle
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Rob,
My heart goes out to you as do my prayers for you and your family. Our daughter took her own life at age 39, leaving two twin daughters in their early teens in 2008. The pain is still sharp and your words reminded me of the only comfort we could find. God bless you and yours.