Comfort in Unbearable Sorrow
There is comfort for those under the raging flood of unbearable sorrow. This includes all those grieving lost loved ones in the recent floods in Texas, especially the families of the girls at Camp Mystic.
God created everything that is, was or ever will be and upholds His creation in the same power and authority with which He made it. As Creator, He has an absolute right of disposition over His creation to appoint joy and sorrow, blessing and cursing, even life and death according to His own will and purpose. Because of mankind’s fall into sin, out of which arise our personal transgressions, we are under a general consequence of death which is preceded by various kinds and degrees of loss.
Yet, in God’s great goodness and power, He sustains much of the good of His creation for man’s sake including the remnant of His law of liberty in the conscience. In the midst of all this, He blesses those who love Him and punishes those who hate Him. At the same time, He disciplines those who love Him and gives opportunity for repentance to those who don’t. The righteous suffer because they are imperfect and God is a good Father who does not let them stay in their destructive sin. The wicked prosper because they are inconsistent and God is gracious. Particular tragedy and suffering may be due to various causes: the general sorrow of man’s fall into sin, just punishment for particular sins, fatherly discipline to turn God’s people from their sins, or causes in God’s purposes that He does not reveal to man as He explains in the biblical book of Job. Even there, He comforts Job with assurances of His goodness and power which He then demonstrates in a final and full deliverance of Job.
All of this, though true, can leave us in deep despair. But God has given us hope. His goodness in the midst of this sorrowful life gives a glimmer of hope, but the revelation of the Gospel in Jesus Christ is the proclamation of it. God promised Adam and Eve that one of their descendants would bring them back to The Garden. This return is not for another opportunity under probation, but with righteousness accomplished by Christ. The result is that He and His people in Him are rewarded with a perfected, new creation. There is no sufficient or satisfying comfort to any who are in sorrow apart from the confident expectation of good based on the promises of God; that is, biblical hope. The promise is to be with Him in a perfected spirit at death and in a perfected body also in a new creation at the resurrection on the last day. Whether it be the sorrows of floods, fires, tornados, hurricanes, disease, sickness, divorce, poverty, homelessness – whatever sorrow it may be – there is only one, real hope. It is that the day will come when every tear will be wiped away as all our sorrows will be forgotten in the joy of the new heavens and the new earth. Just as a mother has great sorrow in giving birth and her sorrow is forgotten in the joy of her newborn child, so we now have sorrow that will be forgotten in the joy of our entrance into the eternal love of God in Christ.
This is the hope that comforts many of the families who are grieving their children and loved ones lost in the recent horrible floods in Texas. Be like them. Turn away from your sin and sorrows, and flee to Christ for this singular and sufficient comfort. Go to Jesus and He will give you rest; in sufficient measure now, in greater measure at death and in perfect abundance at the last great day and forever.
Kit Swartz, Pastor-Teacher Emeritus The Reformed Presbyterian Church Oswego, NY
