The Flog – The Fabry Log

I’ve gotten all sorts of bad news today. This is just a bad news Friday for me personally. I have a cousin who lives in the south. I saw him a few years ago at a reunion. Same age as me. And today I get this email about his situation. He was charged with a crime. Handcuffed. I saw his picture on the TV news. And I found his phone number and called him to get an update and…I won’t go into the particulars here, but the charges were dropped for the crime he was accused of, but there are other charges from another governmental entity that will take over. But he said, “Chris, this is in the Lord’s hands. We may lose everything we have, but we’re going to make it through this.”

And I said, "Well, if you lose everything, you can come out here and live with us.” And then we started talking about Haiti and the people there who had very little to begin with and then the earthquake comes and they have less of it. And you still hear the survivors talking about life and living.

Jesus said, "I came that they might have life and have it abundantly." And I take Him at His word on that. He wants to give us abundant life.

My mother fell yesterday, and I talked with her. And if you have aging parents that you are far away from, you know how difficult this type of thing can be. You just feel helpless.

A friend sent an email out yesterday about a niece who was in a car accident. Please pray, it said. Now there’s going to be a funeral.

Layoffs and people losing their jobs and marriages breaking up.

It just goes on and on. There is no end to the bad news in this life…and you probably can give me a litany of your own bad news, things that have blindsided you.

But in the middle of all of the bad news is the truth, and it’s taken me a while to figure this out, that you don’t have to get through all of this and come out on the other side in order to have life. You don’t have to be out of that terrible job or lawsuit or court action or whatever it is in order to experience the peace of God and the love of God and the care and nurture of God. In fact, you probably will experience that more acutely in the middle of what you’re going through. That doesn’t make it any easier to go through the earthquake or tsunami that you may be facing. It’s still going to be hard. But there is a certain sweetness to the hard stuff, and I didn’t know that–I spent so many years trying to just feel better about life and trying to spiritualize the hard stuff. It’s hard. Life stinks sometimes. It’s just not worth it–all of the work and the striving and toil and sweat and blood. It’s not worth it, if this is all there is. I don’t know how atheists do it.

But I tell you what. When you realize that we have a God of second chances, we have a God who knows the end from the beginning, who cares about us, who numbers the hairs on our heads, who sees the sparrow fall, who thought you up before your parents were even born…and who right now holds you in His hands and wants good things for you, has a plan for you, has desires for you that you may not even be able to glimpse yet…when you see just a sliver of that reality, and you see the hope you can have in God, it doesn’t matter what happens in the world.

I think that is why Jesus had to have such a close relationship with His Father. He had to continue to hang onto that which was not seen, because that which He could see was pretty difficult. The road to Calvary was not an easy one. It was the most difficult journey any human has ever walked. But what it accomplished for you and me in that journey was golden, because that bloody walk paved the way for you and me to have that relationship with God that Jesus had. And it enabled us to see things from an eternal perspective and not just from an earthly one.

So whatever you’re going through right now, may God enable you to not just get through it, but to see the life He wants to offer you in the middle of that suffering. And I pray it would work not only for your good, but also for the good of those around you, and ultimately for the good of the kingdom.