just stop talking.

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

neither are your ways my ways,

declares the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts.'

Isaiah 55:8,9

It wasn't until my brother died that I really understood how it felt to be on the receiving end of well intentioned and 'comforting' words.
The things that would come out of people's mouths would astound me as they would fumble around to make sense out of grief and try to console me with some sort of poorly thought through line that went something along the lines of, "God didn't really mean for him to die this young...." or "heaven needed another angel..." Really?
Just stop talking please.
I know this is not my typical writing style and you are getting a little more of a taste of me personally (for those of you that may not get that normally) but this has been circling through my brain all day and I sense the Spirit prodding me to share.
So....as real and raw as this may sound, I will share.

As we walk earth, we humans feel as though we need to make sense of all that is.
Everything on earth and everything that happens on this temporary planet should have an explanation, or so we think.
So, we grasp at straws and as ridiculous as they may sound, we conjure up some type of explanation just for the sake of having an explanation.
Some of the most educated people believe that the amazing biomechanical piece of machinery we call the human body is the result of millions of years of spontaneous generation and evolution.
Apparently they have never studied the intricacies of the human eye.
But I guess at least they have an 'explanation'.

But even more than the origin of the Earth, I believe death and is the biggest mystery of all.
We struggle to make sense of it.
We search feverishly for ways to avoid it.
We fear it. We dread it. We try and try to explain it.
As I have walked this road, I am learning one thing: God is a mystery.
His Word uncovers pieces of His character and as we walk through life and He reveals Himself to us time and time again, but it is only small parts at a time.
There are many things I don't know but there are a few things that I do...

1.) God is not a needy God. He doesn't 'need' people in Heaven. Heaven is a perfect place that lacks no good thing and therefore can not lack a person or it wouldn't be the perfection that you and I long for (Psalm 68:33, Isa 37:16).

2.) God is not caught off guard. The things of life that shake us and surprise us and break us do not shake Him or surprise Him or break Him. For He is unshaken and all knowing. He is the Alpha and the Omega--He is in the yesterdays, He is the nows and He is in the tomorrows. He is already there. Nothing God does is in error--He is altogether perfectly good and incapable of error as we know it as humans.
(Isa 45:18, Isa 51:6, Revelation 1:8, 22:13)

3.) His ways are not our ways.
Simply put--no one will ever understand why babies pass away...why mothers with babies die in child birth or anytime thereafter...why much loved daddies die after long battles with cancer and three small children left at home with a young wife. Is God cruel? Some may say yes, but truthfully, the love that He has for us is immeasurable and unfathomable (Isa 55:9). All the days of our lives were written before we were ever in existence on this temporary planet (Psalm 139). The truth is, we may never understand what God's purpose was in doing what He has done but there will come a day when we are face to face with our God and Creator, the One who holds all things together, and it will be then that He will make known the mysteries of His way and His will (1 Corinthians 13:12).
What we can be sure of is that the Bible says that our present sufferings cannot compare to the all surpassing glory that He has in store for us (Romans 8:18) and that He has great plans for us, plans for our blessing and plans of hope (Jeremiah 29:11).
Stop talking (Eccl 5:2).
Stop trying to console those grieving with some lofty and non-sensical theological statement.
Often, just sitting quietly and letting them know that you really don't know what it's like and you really don't understand why God does things the way He does but that your heart is broken too is what is needed most.
And chances are, to someone grieving, that is all they need to hear.

tiffany