| Be still...Know that I amGod © Betty Sue Eaton |
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| A Christian Grief Ministry |
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Life After Loss |
Life After Loss |
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| Many times in my life when I have really concentrated on who God is, I always come up with some nebulous image I can’t quite define. When I think about the scope of what God is, I am more at a loss. Who can get an image, a concept of Infinity! Who can describe in human terms what Omnipotence really means, what the universe is, how far it goes, when it will end? And I admit that I cannot conceive of anyone building the earth and everything about it in seven days! I simply boggles my mind! Then as we are told in many, many different references in the Bible, God Is! God Was! God Will Always Be! God is the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega! Period!
I am not capable of thinking very long on that elevated a plain, but I can imagine a conversation with God, the Father, when I am facing trouble, turmoil, crisis, or a death in my family. When I am trying to make sense of it all, and I turn to God, I wonder what He would have to say in response to my weeping and wailing and questions that seem to have no answers. It might go something like this: Oh, God, this can’t be happening! He is so young, too young to have cancer! You called me, my child? You didn’t have to; I already knew this would hurt you because you don’t…you can’t understand my plan for the Universe and Eternity. You can understand as a mother whose son is suffering how I must have felt when my Son Jesus Christ suffered and was crucified on a cruel cross for you. But my son has the boys to care for, to raise to be Christians like he is. Couldn’t you have spared him this terrible illness and pain? As you know, Barrett is rebelling now against his father’s directions and discipline. He is intent on going his own way. That way will break him down and he will find his own way to Me through my son, Jesus Christ. (If I could only tell you that Barrett will come home to me one year before his father, you couldn’t stand it along with what Richard is facing right now. So I will keep silent on that topic for now.) I could have stepped in a saved my son Jesus, but He was born to a plan just as your son is. Your son’s life plan is finite; my Son’s life plan is infinite. He was born to pay for all your sins and those of everyone else who believes in Him and confesses that He is their personal Savior. Father, I know that Barrett has lost his way, but he needs stronger control than either Richard or his Mom is willing to give. I have to leave him up to You to direct when You know the time is right. What more can I do? But why put Richard in harm’s way just as he is succeeding in his business? He has tried so many times and failed; his marriage has failed; why stop him now when his business is thriving; he is succeeding in something? My stricken suffering child; ever since my most perfect creations, Adam and Eve, defiled the Garden of Eden and disobeyed Me, they and everyone who must follow after them is condemned to suffer even as you are right now. As my Disciple, Peter, tells you in his first book in the holy Bible, “…after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself, that’s Me, restore, establish, and strengthen you. (I Peter 5:10 RSV). But let Me get back to your son, Richard. Are you aware of how many people he sees in a week? Are you aware of how many times he gives testimony for Me and my son, Jesus Christ, both in his words and his example? Have you noticed when you visit with him in his church- my house- how the people there respond to him? How they reach out to embrace him and bless him? Have you seen his eyes light up when he sings a hymn or whistles one as he works in his store? Oh, Lord, I am going to miss all those things so terribly I really don’t think I can go without him – my second child, going with You! How can You subject me, their mother, to such pain and grief? How could you take my baby girl and now my only son? My grieving child. I know what it is to lose one’s only son. I went through that pain just as you are now. But I am trying to teach you through Richard’s light if only you would look and listen to what is going on! Can’t you see that it is I who is shining through your son’s examples? Who woke him at 2 a.m. on that June morning and told him to write what I said, word for word? He was struggling with Me as well as you are, so I took that poem to clarify what he was experiencing so he would understand perfectly. He did. Why can’t you see it also? He made a direct point of showing it to you in his confusion because he was never ever able to write any kind of poetry. He was trying so hard to accept that it was I or one of my angels who dictated that poem, a pattern for the rest of his life. That poem broke my heart because it said that he was going to die and there was nothing I could do about it! It was a year before he died. Why did you have to put him through that agony of leaving his sons knowing that they were both in need of guidance, and knowing their mother would not give it? They were lost, dear God, why did you take their only anchor, their father? Why? Richard was already at home with Me then…even then. After that, each time he would be around anyone else, he was thanking Me for all the blessings he was receiving, Who do you think arranged for all that late help in his treatment? The free airline passes, the organic food, the equipment to process them, the pure water. How do you think everyone in town spontaneously thought of all those things? It could have been only Me as no one else is omnipotent enough to be in all those minds and hearts at one time. Alright, I will admit I thought of You in all those things, I even thanked You for them. Who else could I thank? I didn’t know all those people who formed prayer chains around the clock, or all those strangers who were praying simultaneously around the world. That could have only been You. I was so touched by them all. But as he lay in the hospital bed in his last hours, was that You he saw standing against the wall? The man he said was so bright and shining? So beautiful? Was that you in his room with me and I couldn’t see You? You still had not learned that I am All. I am Alpha and Omega! The Beginning and the End. No one comes to me but through my son, Jesus Christ, as your son, Richard, did. But you still were fighting me for control of your life. You still had not trusted you’re everything to Me. Be still and know that I am God. Be still and hear me speak quietly to your heart. You can’t hear me when you are crying out in despair. Be still and I will enter your heart and give you peace. Be still and receive Me into your life as Richard had done. All you have to do is ask and I will give you peace that passes all human understanding. I will give you a quiet heart and a still mind. I will help you accept that your son’s going is part of his life plan written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, just as yours is. I will be with you in the still of the night, in the roar of traffic, in the din of your life. Lo, I will be with you unto the end of the earth, for I am God! I Am! My dear grieving friend, ever since that experience – not the conversation written here, but my son’s dying, I have never doubted that if God would speak audibly to me, that is what He would say. He is true to His words; I know because I have lived out that conversation. He promises that all you have to do is ask then wait with a still heart and mind, and you will be given peace and comfort in your grief. He never goes back on His words! May you find that perfect peace and acceptance in God’s comforting arms. ~ Betty |