March is a month that can be many things. This March began with sunny, shirt-sleeve weather. Today, it seems that winter has returned. Much of the natural world is still asleep, awaiting rebirth and renewal. Yet for now, the cold remains and in truth, this morning, it's also winter in our souls.
To varying degrees, everybody here today suffers from a sense of loss. Nobody of course, suffers from that loss more greatly than Eric, Sean, Adam, Betty, and Diane's family. But Diane's life and her tough-as-nails fight with leukemia over these past two years have touched us all. As we prepare to take Diane's earthly body to its resting place, I can tell you that my family and I personally feel a sense of loss too. Diane came into our lives, along with the rest of the family, nearly ten years ago. Our son had invited Sean to worship with us at Friendship Church and the whole Binder brood came along. Through the years, our sons graduated together and played softball together. For several years, Diane and my wife held a garage sale at our place, with Eric and I acting as official go-fers. Through the years, we came to appreciate and love Diane's unshakable commitment to her family and her wonderfully silly sense of humor.
And so this morning, in the winter of our souls, our minds and hearts are a tangle of unanswered questions, dashed hopes, and fractured dreams. We wonder why all our prayers for Diane seem to have gone unanswered. We wonder why she had to suffer so long. We can't understand why she lost her life at such a young age, before she was able to see her boys married, before she was able to see any grandchildren. We ask why, so soon after Diane had found work that stirred her soul, she was taken from us and from the children she was committed to helping on the job. We're human and we can't help but ask, Where is God?
Though every death and loss are unique tragedies, we aren't the first to ask such questions. Back in the Old Testament portion of the Bible, you can find the true story of a man named Job. Job was a man who loved God and loved his family with passion and devotion. He was also a man with many friends. In a short amount of time though, Job lost everything. His ten children, who had been celebrating, were wiped out in an instant. So, too were all of his property and holdings. Job was without his children and living in poverty. Grief-stricken, the winter of his soul was compounded when his own body began to rebel against him, breaking out in painful sores all over. All Job had left now was his wife and she was no help. Observing everything and apparently intent on finding a different life, she told Job, "Why don't you just curse God and die?"
Job did question God. Like Diane on occasion, Job wondered what God was allowing to happen to him. He wondered what God was doing. Job even shook an angry fist at God and asked, "What did I ever do to You, Lord, that all of this has befallen me?" I admire the honesty of the Bible that it includes the prayers of saints who questioned God or were angry at God. But as I pointed out to Diane many times, when she had her Job-like questions, only those who believe in God bother asking Him questions or getting angry with Him. Like Job, Diane believed. And she wondered.
Yet like Job, I believe that if Diane could speak to you today, she would make an incredible affirmation of God's love and care for us when winter hits and an affirmation of the hope with which all of us should live each day. Job said, even as he grieved and suffered:
"For I know that my Redeemer [God] lives, and that at the last He will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, Whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, not another."
Thousands of years before the birth of Jesus, Job was pointing to the hope that the New Testament tells us belongs to all who will turn from sin and entrust their lives to Jesus Christ. Death doesn't have the final say in the life of the person who follows Jesus Christ. Jesus, truly God and truly Man, died and rose so that death doesn't have the last word in the lives of His followers.
In Christian tradition, Jesus has been pictured as a butterfly. After He died an excruciating death on a cross, He was laid in a tomb that became His cocoon. On the third day, He rose again. Jesus is God's answer to all our wonderings and questionings today. He doesn't erase the mysteries that we can't comprehend. He doesn't reveal why Diane suffered so or was taken from us at such a young age or any of the rest. But He does make a promise:
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life."
Like butterflies, if we follow Him by faith, Jesus Christ will allow us to emerge from our cocoons and from our souls' winter to live new and an everlasting lives with God. And in the meantime—through winter and all the seasons of goodness and laughter, along with those of hardship and tears, Jesus makes another promise: that He will be with us always. God, Who learned personally all about suffering and loss and feeling alone in grief when Jesus went to the cross, is on our side! He also knows the wonderful tomorrow He has waiting for all who believe in Him!
The Bible says that nothing can separate us from the love of God, given to us through Jesus Christ. If that's not true today, it simply isn't true. But it is true, a truth affirmed by hundreds of people who saw Jesus risen from the dead and by the changed lives of millions who have come to believe in Jesus through the centuries.
This morning I don't have all the answers to your questions. But I can offer you Jesus Christ and I can beg you to follow Him. Jesus gives the promise that God stands with you in your grief and the certainty that through His forgiving love and power over death, winter will give way to spring...death will yield to life...tears will all be dried...and pain will be a thing of the past.
