A mother sat pouring her heart out to me a couple of years after her daughter’s suicide. A beautiful young girl had chosen to drop out of life before she even knew what it was all about. Dad and Mom were left to sort out the details and interpret the rambling note to the girl’s two year old son.
Imagine the sadness.
What made the pain worse was that this family had gone to church together and the girl had made a childhood profession of following Jesus. Mom quoted the well-known text, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.” What went wrong, they wondered. It’s God’s word.
So a family crisis had become a crisis of faith. It happens a lot when what God seems to say clashes with our reality. . .
“Ask anything in my name. . .”
“My God will supply all your need. . .”
“My grace is sufficient for you. . .”
“If you have faith the size of a mustard seed. . .”
All of these are sweeping statements about our life in God, but what if we don’t receive, our “needs” go unmet, grace seems to fall short, and my faith nets nothing? We must go back to the context to find what’s really being said, what is being promised, and what is not.
In the case above, there was no promise. I quietly asked the woman, “What book is that statement from?”
“Proverbs.”
“What book?”
“Proverbs.”
“And what is a proverb?”
“Well, it’s a saying about what usually happens.”
“Yes. It’s not a promise, but a general principle about how things go.”
Her face softened a little. Lights were coming on. We talked about the nature of the Bible’s wisdom literature (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiates, etc.), which calls for each individual, including children of godly parents, to make choices God does not veto. While our parents nurture us, in the end we live with the consequences of our choices. (You’ll recall that the author/editor of Proverbs, a son of David, by the end of his life had himself become an idolater. 1 Kings 11:1-4)
She never lost her faith, even in the pain, because ultimately she knew that God was loving and faithful. He never deceives us, and when a Scripture seems to be “wrong,” it is our interpretation which needs adjusting, not God’s character. When that reality is our North Star, His Word will guide us through any storm. The one thing He can not do is be untrue to Himself. 2 Timothy 2:13
“God is not a man that he should lie,
or a son of man that he should change his mind.
Has he said, and will he not do it?
Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?
Numbers 23:19