Where Do We Begin?

Seminary was just finished and I had come to my first church. Good people, a nice facility, and high anticipation for the future — a good start for right out of the gate. It seemed more than I could have expected. Then I discovered that I was following a nice guy who had gotten into trouble over the issue of prayer in public schools. An uproar had shaken the entire community. The congregation was in shambles, and the church finances were on the edge of bankruptcy. On my first Sunday, only twenty-five members showed up.

Didn't matter. I was ready to take on bears and lions. I felt I could tackle any problem. So I began vigorously calling on the membership and set out to create a new environment in the congregation. I knew I could count on the church's lay leader. Everyone liked Gene May.

Gene was a handsome, no-nonsense guy who walked with a cane even though he was only in his forties. I soon discovered the cane was necessary because he was partially blind as a result of an operation to remove a brain tumor. The slight indentation on the side of his head was a result of the procedure. Gene didn't talk much about the cancer, but I assumed it was taken care of, and we went on about our business.

I began to notice that the indentation on his temple seemed to be filling. I wasn't sure what it meant but I knew that this was not a good sign. Finally, his wife, Eloise, confided that Gene's remaining eyesight was failing. Another operation was not possible. The tumor had returned.

The Mays had two sons, and I knew the boys were struggling with what they could see happening. We talked, prayed, and kept hoping. The tumor kept growing.

Finally Gene made his last trip to the hospital. They called me to come quickly and offer the final prayers. As Gene slipped away in the darkness of that dim room, I knew I couldn't weep because I had to be supportive of the family, but the spiritual air was knocked out of me. My dear friend had died while only a young man, and I couldn't make any sense out of his death.

That's where this book began.

Staring into the Emptiness

A skeptical medical doctor recently observed that the church loves to talk about the times when prayers are answered, but they are silent about the times when nothing happens. While his remark does not negate the fact that multitudes are healed through prayer, his charge exposes our tendency to ignore the many occasions when nothing seems to have happened. These times of awful silence leave us bewildered and we'd rather walk away than talk about the emptiness.

But his comment also points to a problem in the Protestant church. With multitudes of plain crosses adorning church buildings and sanctuaries, virtually no one has a crucifix anywhere in sight. That kind of cross is for the Roman Catholics, we explain. We celebrate the resurrection, the empty cross, Easter. Well, that's a point in our favor, but it hides the fact that we don't like to visit the crucifixion. Our inability to grasp the full picture of the cross is part of the reason we have so much trouble handling the times when nothing keeps pain and death away from our door.

A prominent pastor and friend built a large, successful church. When I was visiting the congregation, I noticed there was not even one cross — adorned or not — in the entire multiacre plant. I inquired why there were no crosses. I was told the pastor considered the cross to be too negative. Everything had to be positive!

This pastor may have developed a congregation of up-and-onwarders, but there was no place there for the down-and-outers. The people who struggle with brokenness cannot live on clichés and enthusiasm. Much more is needed. Like a crucifix.

[In the pain and agony of the crucifixion, there are sacred secrets and divine discoveries to be made, which enable us to live through our own times of trial and trauma.]

The Roman Catholic Church has for centuries lived and worked with "the least of these." A host of saints have walked with the poor and destitute when nothing miraculous changed their situation. They have learned that in the pain and agony of the crucifixion, there are sacred secrets and divine discoveries to be made, which enable us to live through our own times of trial and trauma. We must draw near to discover what we may have missed.

We might find that the emptiness is not as empty as we thought.

Finding the Other Side

I know a great deal more about pain than I could have thought possible when I penned the first edition of this book. I have buried my grandparents, parents, and nephews. I have watched divorce ravage my family and seen some of my most cherished dreams shredded. I have had to walk through nights darker than I ever dreamed were possible. But I did get to the other side. Today, I no longer worry about other black nights that I am sure I have yet to visit. I can tell you with a greater certainty than at any time in my past that "underneath are the everlasting arms" (Deut. 33:27), and they do hold in the middle of the night. The God of which I write is still the Rock that does not move. Regardless of appearances, nothing can separate us from His love. We must examine honestly both the times when His love is real and when that same love is hidden. In the next few chapters we will attempt to do so.

It is surprising to realize how unexpected our discoveries can be. Here's an example. During my early days in a hostile seminary environment, I faced PhDs ready to slice up my young faith like a slab of bacon and serve me at the next faculty cookout. So I corresponded with Dr. Bernard Ramm, seeking insight and help with the Scriptures under critical scrutiny. Dr. Ramm was internationally known for his work in hermeneutics, the science of biblical interpretation. I searched to find his address and wrote the scholar, seeking his help. I told him I was going to be in a hostile environment and needed his insights. Much to my delight, he wrote back, and a relationship began.

Although we never formally met, Dr. Ramm kept his letters coming and sent books to help me grasp and argue for the veracity and dependability of the Bible. I often reflected that, without his instruction from afar, I might well have washed out and left the rough-and-tumble academic world an agnostic, or at least crippled and inept. His inspiration and instruction in defending and interpreting Scripture helped me frame my initial approach to ministry. Professors who held divergent viewpoints had to yield to the firm defenses that I made via Bernard Ramm.

I graduated from seminary, began a ministry, and lost contact with Dr. Ramm. The ministry prospered, and eventually I wrote When There Is No Miracle. Over a decade later, a letter came from Modesto, California, with the return address marked B. Ramm. I eagerly opened the envelope, wondering if this could be the same theologian. But why would he be writing me, a parish pastor? The letter was poorly scribbled, as if by someone with faltering penmanship. The longer I read, the more amazed I became. The thank-you note was indeed from my old friend and counselor, now at the end of his tether.

Six weeks earlier, Dr. Ramm had gone in for a routine and simple cataract operation. Everything had gone wrong. A week later he was permanently blind in one eye and rapidly losing all sight in the other. The ensuing weeks were painful and catastrophic. He was terrified! A theologian works with his eyes like a pianist performs with his fingers. Dr. Ramm was devastated.

But his wife had bought him a copy of my book. Together they plowed through the pages. Something was stirred in Bernard Ramm. While he had not had a miracle, his spiritual sight began to return, even though physically he continued with cloudy vision.

Barely able to see well enough to compose a letter, he wrote to tell me that doubt had moved into the bed next to him. For all of his theological expertise and personal brilliance, he had fallen into despair and depression. A voracious reader, he felt his mind was starving and his soul bereft of comfort. Eventually limited sight returned to his remaining good eye. A copy of my book had brought comfort. When There Is No Miracle was his first reading in weeks, and something very important happened as he laboriously worked his way through the chapters. Depression waned and faith returned.

Bernard Ramm had forgotten the name of the little seminarian with whom he corresponded years earlier. My name had merged into the multitude of students marching through his classrooms and out into the ministry. Although he didn't remember me, he wrote to say thank you for the help the book had given him.

I wrote back, "Thank you, old friend. You don't remember me, but without your concern and help years ago, I would never have written those pages and been available for you in your time of need." Bernard Ramm had found the other side. His spiritual eyes had prevailed.

Recovering Our Faith

The writer of Hebrews wrote, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Heb. 11:1). Our task is to find a set of eyes that can pierce the invisible and see what has existed when the emptiness appeared to be all encompassing. We will attempt to discover how not to have our hopes dashed. Far from developing a blind faith that ignores the issues, the doubts, and the difficulties, we will quest after a faith that walks through the most obscure night — not fearlessly but with enduring confidence.

The following chapters are not a theologian's dissertation but the product of a pastor's daily rounds of hospitals, homes, and haunts of affliction. From my journeys I have learned that it is best to gain a correct perspective before we come to a crisis. Once we descend into the swirl of emotion and confusion, the dilemmas loom so large that we find it difficult to see beyond the question marks. I hope these insights will more adequately prepare you to recognize God's presence when turmoil raises a dust that will not allow you to open your eyes, and that they will also answer the issues of hurting people.

A PERSONAL CONVERSATION WITH JESUS

When I first encountered Jesus, His sense of destiny drew me even closer. Never had I seen anyone who showed such certainty and surety with His every action. This was a man who knew where He was going! The longer I listened, the more that verdict was confirmed.

One night at supper I asked Him about my own unanswered question. "Jesus, You have made sense out of my aimless life. Yet so much of what I have experienced seems to have no purpose whatsoever. Why can't I understand the final reasons for all that I have suffered?"

He picked up the loaf from the table and ripped the bread apart. Holding the torn halves, He stared into my eyes. "My Father does not let us see life from beginning to end. But we know that His loving hands hold even the pieces that are broken."

My doubts insisted on one more word. "But how do I know that His love holds the broken portions?"

He laid down the loaves and reached for my hand. His touch was warm and firm. His answer was simple. "You know me, don't you?"

The Assurance of Things Hoped For

When our physical eyes are failing, how do we maintain any spiritual vision? When our prayers aren't answered, how can we continue praying for what is precious to us? Somewhere within us we desperately anticipate that hope alone can keep us running, but what can we hang on to if hope is destroyed? We end up facing a quandary: How can we pray for and believe in miracles when they don't seem to happen?

Can we keep faith in a God of the marvelous when our petitions have not been fulfilled? Many people today think not.

The Times in Which We Live

Like it or not, we are all to some extent a product of the age we live in. Ours has become a time of secularity in which God is considered absent. Walk the streets of New York City on Sunday morning and you'll see an endless string of empty churches. It's even worse in England, where centuries-old churches are being turned into pubs and pizza parlors.

Not many people claim to be atheists. They don't care that much.

Relatively few are deeply hostile toward the church, but many feel that the church is not particularly competent. Secularism has made people fundamentally indifferent. They just don't care.

Only the desperate really reach out to attempt to touch the divine hand. End of story.

[Only the desperate really reach out to attempt to touch the divine hand.]

Consequently it may be difficult for us to talk about or reflect on tragedy in the context of an empty universe. In an age that explains away any possibility of a miracle, you might be thinking that I am coming at this problem of loss and grief by excluding any real divine intervention. Let's take a longer look at where we are in this moment in history.

Five hundred years ago, the medieval era came to its conclusion. In that earlier period, everyone believed in magic, superstition, and the miraculous. It was the womb from which our world was born. The Renaissance and Enlightenment that followed produced the advent of science and rationalism, which measured reality by the yardstick and compass. What was not demonstrable was not believable, and of course no devices existed to prove the existence of God. The age of doubt had begun.

In the twentieth century, war after war and the explosion of nuclear weapons clouded the terrain with cynicism and despair. The horrors of World War II birthed existentialism and slammed the door on any possibility of divine interventions. The Holocaust, destroying six million Jews who worshipped the God of the Old Testament, hurled multitudes into darkness. Night and day went black.

The twenty-first century has done no better. Tsunami has become a common word. America's presence in Iraq helped radicalize Muslim terrorists who continue to ravage the entire Middle East. This is the world we now live in. Should someone ask where God is in all of it, the contemporary answer would be, "Are you kidding?"

No one can help but be affected by skepticism in some way. When we start searching for answers to why so many suffer, we must recognize that doubt is not abnormal. Consequently, you may be surprised that I am going to make a radical departure from the spirit of this present age. Far from pandering to doubt, I want to affirm the reality of God at work in our worst times, for I have spent many decades living with divine interventions.

Bucking the Tide

I stumbled onto a divergent route through a severe mercy (as C. S. Lewis would have called it) that radically changed my mind. During my academic training, no one considered the idea of miracles or divine interventions beyond a hop, skip, and a jump over the fact that they were reported to have occurred in the past — the far, far distant past. Without giving it any thought, we went on to other subjects.

I was in my second year of ministry after seminary when I developed a difficult case of allergies. Believing I was capable of leaping tall buildings in a single bound, of course I did not stop working. Preaching on Sundays while running a temperature would surely prompt the parishioners to put a little extra in the offering plate. We all have to give it all we've got, I thought. So, feeling terrible, I kept plugging away. Finally a doctor at the church told me to see him the next day. I didn't look good, he said. That was an understatement; death was knocking at my door, and what followed is a story I have reserved for the last chapter. But here I want to share how pain brought me to an important spiritual discovery.

Lying on a hospital bed with acute renal failure, I noticed a crucifix on the wall. If I locked my attention on that dying form, maybe I could transfer some of the burning pain away from my body. I stared at the broken shape, trying to study the agony of Jesus, and to my surprise, I actually displaced some of the pain. It was an exercise in mental gymnastics, but it helped.

A week later I remembered the crucifix at St. Antony's Hospital and the help it had given me. In my wooziness and weakness, maybe I could in a small way identify with that wounded figure again. I stretched out on my bed in a cruciform position, closed my eyes, and tried to envision Jesus's moment of death.

In my mind, the crucified Christ began to emerge larger than life. Lost in the meditation, I could literally feel the wrenching agony of life slipping away from Jesus. And then, abruptly, I was on the cross with Jesus. I was in Him and He was in me! The passage from Galatians 2:20 raced through my mind: "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." In some fashion that I could never grasp, I was living out that Scripture as my personal reality.