Mountains and Valleys

Working with students and kids gives you some of the best and hardest moments that you could imagine. These past two weeks have been some of the hardest. The day before Christmas Eve, I got word that one of my favorite middle school kids (who is now 16) was diagnosed with leukemia. The day after Christmas, I heard that two girls (age 10 & 12) who are serving as missionaries in Senegal with their parents, had been hospitalized with a particularly serious form of malaria that resulted in them being life-flighted to Paris and one girl going into a coma. Tonight I just got home from a memorial service for another loved middle school boy (who was now 18) who passed away on New Year's Eve from a drug overdose. I would be lying if I didn't say that there has been more than one time when I've had to ask God, "What is going on here?!?"

I know that He is deeply involved and cares about each of these situations. I praise Him that the boy w/ leukemia seems to be responding from initial treatments, and one of the girls has been released from the hospital and the other is coming out of her coma. And there were well over 500 people who came to the memorial service and heard a message about God's saving grace. Clearly, He is working to redeem and restore that which the enemy clearly meant for evil. But the pain is still there. The hurt is still there. The tragedies are still very real.

Maybe that's why the older I get, the more significant John 11:35 becomes to me. "Jesus wept." I learned it at a young age, being the shortest verse in the Bible, but the profundity in the statement resonates with me anew. His friend Lazarus had died. He knew he was going to die. He knew he was going to raise him to life again. And although there may be much scholarly speculation about why He cried, He cried. Not only cried, but wept. Jesus wept. The raw emotion that He so unabashedly exhibited speaks a world of comfort and compassion to me in these kinds of moments that surpasses any words. I, too, will weep with these families and friends, and I'm sure it won't be the last time. And in the midst of that suffering, my Savior is right there beside me, weeping with me, and speaking forth life into the darkest of situations.