When Life Falls Apart 4: The Valley of Shadows

This podcast is brought to you by Walnut Grove Lutheran Church in Langley, D.C., in the hope that it will draw you closer to the one who loves you most.

At two o'clock in the afternoon on August the 5th, 2010, there was a collapse in the Capayapo Gold and Copper Mine in northern Chile.

One miner escaped, but 33 miners were trapped.

Rescuers immediately began drilling a series of exploratory holes to try and reach them if they had survived.

On day 17, when they pulled one of the drill bits to the surface, there was a note attached which said in Spanish, we are safe in the refuge, the 33.

The miners were alive beneath the surface of the ground.

That was fantastic news.

But there was much work that needed to be done before they could be rescued.

And it took another 52 days to expand that hole that was drilled and bring all of the miners safe to the surface in a blue, red, and white capsule called the Phoenix.

And that rescue was completed on October the 13th, 2010, 69 days after the collapse happened.

Now, while the story of the Chilean mine collapse had a fantastic ending, I'm asking you to imagine what it was like for those 33 miners during the 17 days in the darkness when they looked toward the surface and cried out for rescue, but none came.

It's a dilemma that people of faith often face.

The Bible encourages us to pray to God, yet sometimes we lift up intense prayers of sorrow, suffering, and loneliness, and we receive no response.

A loved one's deadly illness never gets healed.

A broken marriage is never restored, and a strange child never comes home.

The silence can cause us to wonder: does God really hear me?

Does God really care?

Or perhaps even, does God really exist?

God's silence in response to fervent prayers for rescue and restoration is not something we often talk about in the church.

But it has been a real life challenge in the lives of God's people for millennia.

Even God's own son passionately prayed to his father in a time of great crisis and heard nothing back.

So, what do you do when you cry out to God, and the only response is silence?

To answer that question, let's turn to Psalm 88.

And as we do that, there is a key feature of this psalm that we need to be aware of.

And that is that this is the only psalm in the Bible that gives no explicit expression of hope, like every other psalm does.

This is a psalm for those times in life when it looks like all is lost.

And I've experienced those times myself.

Hot tears have rolled down my cheeks, and I wept loudly in a shower in Kelowna after being told by a doctor that one of my children could die from injuries they sustained.

Years later, there was another time when tears filled my eyes again as Susan and I sat with a hospital counselor and we wondered why a different one of our children was suffering so severely from mental illness.

Sometimes there are no signs of encouragement, and there's no one who can give us hope.

Our hearts are broken, and there's nowhere for us to turn.

Except to God.

Despite being filled with despair, Psalm 88 can still help us.

First, it gives us a language to express what's in our hearts during the darkest times of our lives.

And second, it directs us to share our feelings with God.

You may wonder what's the point of doing that if the only response we get from God is silence?

And that's certainly a valid question.

But there is more happening in prayer than we realize, dear friends.

We can grasp the concept of our prayers changing God's direction for our lives.

But we can miss how God is changing us through our prayers.

A heartfelt cry of despair, along with expressions of anger, accusations, and dismay directed toward God are still expressions of faith.

It is at times like this when we are perhaps most honest with God.

We pour out our heart to God, sharing our most painful thoughts and our deepest emotions until there's nothing left.

With the psalmist, we pray, Lord, you are the God who saves me.

Day and night I cry out to you.

May my prayer come before you.

Turn your ear to my cry.

I am overwhelmed with troubles, and my life draws near to death.

I am counted among those who go down to the pit.

I am like one without strength.

Now we don't know the specific circumstances behind this psalm, but these are the words of someone who is suffering near death and filled with dread.

Their loved ones and their friends have abandoned them, and they fear the possibility that perhaps God has abandoned them as well.

Not only is God silent, he has also allowed this crisis to happen.

The psalmist expresses to God the accusation in their heart.

You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths.

Your wrath lies heavily on me.

You have overwhelmed me with all your waves.

You have taken from me my closest friends and made me repulsive to them.

I am confined and I cannot escape.

Psychologists tell us that the sharing of strong, otherwise hidden emotions, which is called catharsis, can give us a deep sense of relief, bring clarity to our mind, and set us on the path toward renewal.

And catharsis is part of what's happening in Psalm 88 when that psalm becomes personal for us.

But there's more.

The silence from God and the lack of change in our circumstances can conclude, can lead us to conclude that God isn't with us, he doesn't hear us, and he no longer loves us.

But none of those things are true.

And the depth of our brokenness has a good and godly purpose that we can never otherwise see or experience.

Even in the silence, even in the darkness, even when our greatest fears become true, God has something beautiful for us.

He is with us.

Centuries after Psalm 88 was composed, a man was fervently praying in a garden outside Jerusalem.

That man was Jesus of Nazareth.

And he knew that great suffering lay before him.

He knew that those closest to him would deny him, betray him, and abandon him.

He knew that he would be nailed to a cross to suffer the most excruciating pain humanly possible.

And he knew that in the end he would be dead.

And he deserved none of this.

He was the only perfect human being who ever lived.

He was a completely loyal son to his father.

And yet he would soon suffer more than what even the worst of sinners could ever deserve.

And so Jesus led his followers to an olive grove, the Garden of Gethsemane.

And he invited the others to sit and wait while he took Peter, James, and John further into the garden to pray.

At one point, Jesus turned to them and said, My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.

Stay here and keep watch with me.

You can hear the depth of the pain in Jesus' words.

Matthew tells us what happened next.

Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.

Yet not as I will, but as you will.

During the darkness of that lonely night, Jesus prayed that prayer three times.

And each time the response was silence.

And Jesus' circumstances did not change.

The hours unfolded just as he had feared.

He was arrested in that garden, beaten, falsely accused, flogged, stripped naked, and nailed to a cross to die.

Yet the worst pain Jesus experienced was not the physical pain.

It was abandonment by his Father.

On top of the physical suffering of crucifixion, Jesus also wore all the sins of humanity, all of your sins and mine, and he suffered the punishment that those sins deserved.

And the Father's holiness compelled him to turn away from the horror of his sin-covered son.

Feeling the pain of his father's absence, Jesus cried out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Separation from his father was a pain that Jesus had never before experienced throughout all time and eternity, and it was horrific for him.

And then when the suffering for all sin was complete, Father and Son were reconciled.

Jesus called out with a loud voice, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.

When he had said this, he breathed his last.

Dear friends, Jesus is God's answer when we suffer and pray, and God is silent.

On the third day after his death, Jesus, or God the Father, raised Jesus from the dead.

Jesus is alive and he rules over all creation at the right hand of his Father in heaven.

His death and his resurrection are our guarantee that he will never leave us or abandon us.

And he will never, ever, ever stop loving us.

Because he went through death for us, we can know that should the worst happen and we die, the quality of life we will have with him on the other side of death will far, far outweigh all of the suffering and sorrow we experience in the here and now.

God's silence never means that we are unloved or alone or that things are hopeless.

You see, God has something good for us in the silence.

But receiving that gift may require an unformed part of our soul to grow.

Like a seed planted in the ground, that part will only grow in the darkness as we yearn for and reach toward God.

And then we find that He's already there with us.

In chapter six of his book, Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering, Timothy Keller shares Kendra's story.

During her first pregnancy, Kendra experienced a rare condition called hyperamasis gravidarium, which causes severe nausea and vomiting.

With significant medical intervention, she was able to deliver a healthy baby girl, and Kendra's symptoms disappeared the day that her daughter was born.

Naively thinking that they had things all figured out, Kendra and her husband tried to conceive again.

When Kendra became pregnant, the condition returned, and this time the symptoms were far more severe.

During an ultrasound, halfway through the pregnancy, Kendra and her husband's hearts were broken when the technician could not find the baby's heartbeat.

And their son, John Wilson, was born lifeless the next morning.

Describing the days that followed, Kendra writes, there were moments of anger, but more often I felt anguish, despair, jealousy, bitterness, and profound sorrow.

But somehow, in the midst of the rains of emotions, I felt daily, a strong and powerful peace found its way into my heart and brought comfort.

I felt God's presence deeply and slowly began the process of learning that although he allows tragedies to befall us, he will not abandon us nor deny us in an intimate and life-giving relationship with him.

My relationship with him was growing in new ways and becoming more real.

He was drawing me closer to him through each painful question and doubt.

He was truly in this dark place with us.

Later, Kendra describes what life is like for her now, after the darkness.

In the days after losing our son, a friend told me that we would always walk with a limp from now on.

Although our scars are not physical, the pain has left a mark on our hearts.

But I like to think of these scars as unique marks of beauty and depth.

She goes on to say how God has blessed them in many ways and gave them a miracle baby, another son, years later.

She continues to write, I look forward to the day when we will be reunited with our first son in heaven.

But until then, it is gratitude we feel for experiencing God in a very real and dynamic way, and we rejoice in the life He has given us.

So the challenge I wish to set before you today, dear friends, is this that if you ever find yourself in a dark pit of despair, the encouragement that I want to give you is this direct all your pain, emotions, questions, and accusations toward God.

Although he seems silent, he hears you, he loves you, and he will use your pain and suffering to draw you closer to him in a way that could never happen otherwise.

And he always, always, always has something better for us on the other side of it.

Amen.

Let's pray.

Dear Jesus, we thank you for going through the valley of the shadow of death for us.

And we thank you for the good news that in you we have the sure and certain promise that you are never we are never alone in our dark valleys.

You are with us, and you love us, and we are forever safe with you.

And you have made death into a doorway through which you will walk with us into a greater and more wonderful and grander life beyond that you are going to give us.

And so we pray, Lord, that you would help us to continue to be people of hope, fixed with our eyes on you, following you wherever you lead us, even through times of dark valleys.

In your precious name we ask this, and all God's people said, Amen.

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Thank you and God's blessing.