Listening For God in Grieving the Death of Natalie Black

Well, last week Natalie Black was in chapel with us.

And today Natalie Black is in heaven.

Let the reality of that sink in a little bit.

Let the awe and wonder of that sink in a little bit.

Seven days ago she was sitting right here in one of these seats.

And today she's sitting at the foot of the cross.

Jesus resurrected.

She started eternal life even though she ended this life.

I sent you the email to let you know of her death.

I didn't know Natalie well.

I wish I had from what I've learned about her, Natalie was a

track athlete.

She just won second in the triple jump on Saturday in the meet

audit mc and then went home to see her family, have dinner, laid

down, take a nap and didn't wake up.

She was a strong student.

She was kind.

She was happy.

She had two brothers, one a little older, one a little younger.

When I talked to her mother again last night, she called her

a bright light.

She said this about her, which I liked and I wrote her down.

She said she was that favorite kid that gets on your nerves and

you're really glad she does.

I thought that was pretty good.

I didn't know her.

I wish I had, but I've gotten through text back and forth.

And today to know Jesselyn, her roommate, a little bit, Jesselyn

Gordon is going to come and share.

Jesselyn, will you come?

And I'm so glad your dad came with you today to support you in

this.

This is hard to do, but I asked Jesselyn if she'd be willing

to share a little bit about Natalie.

Good morning.

So, yes, my name is Jesslyn.

I was Natalie's roommate and friend and before I start, I would

like to send my deepest condolences to her family, friends

and teammates.

I had known Natalie since middle school and she was always

sweet and a very caring young woman.

She had a passion for track and not only was it a passion for

her, but she was amazing.

At was wonderful watching her grow up into the person she became.

And I never got the chance to tell her how proud I was of her because

she made many achievements, she accomplished so many things and

she was on her way to much more success.

She was so young and had so much more life ahead of her.

So I want to tell everyone who's listening, life is so short.

Don't take it for granted.

Tell your friends and family that you love them.

Celebrate their achievements, whether big or small.

Let go of any grudges that you hold against others and learn to

forgive them.

Life isn't easy.

It's very difficult.

There will Always be storms that will try to come and darken

your sun.

But you have to keep going.

Remember, pain is only temporary and it only makes us stronger.

Remember to surround yourself with positivity.

Be grateful for any and everything.

And mostly remember to thank God for waking you up this morning.

Be grateful that you can walk, that you can talk, that you can see.

You're all in here right now, you're healthy, listening to me talk.

So as long as God keeps waking you up, remember that he has a plan

for you.

He's not done so appreciate the small things in life.

Don't be afraid to talk to God.

He's always here to help, no matter when, no matter what.

And if you haven't built a relationship with him, now's the

time to do it.

So may God rest Natalie's beautiful soul in peace and in power.

Forever live Natalie Black.

Thank you.

I want to pray for Jesselyn before she goes down and others of

you who knew Natalie well.

You were on the track team with her.

She was on your hall or classes together.

I want to lift up all of you in prayer with Jesselyn.

Lord, we heard today and those who know Natalie the best hurt the

most and so be with Jesselyn and others who were her friends because

the loss is so deep and it's so shocking and it's so overwhelming

and there are more questions than there are answers and there's

more pain than there is healing.

But you have promised to be with us through the valley of the

shadow of death and be with Jesselyn and track members, coaches,

friends, who knew Natalie best, especially during this time.

Your name, we ask it.

Amen.

Thank you so much.

When I talked to Natalie's mother again last night, she said

as we were hanging up, she said, God is good.

I said, do you know that was our theme verse?

She said, God is good all the time.

I said, yeah, he is.

But it doesn't feel like it, does he right now and it doesn't

feel like it when one who was sitting here last week died unexpectedly.

It doesn't feel like God is good.

But God is so good.

God didn't change between last week and this week.

God is still good all the time, even when our circumstances

change.

But it does raise the question why?

Why does a 19 year old healthy person die all of a sudden?

Why?

I want to tell you the answer.

I don't know.

That's the answer.

I don't know.

I wish I knew.

But I trust God and God always is either protecting or preparing.

And we do trust him.

But I don't know.

Scripture says, we see things imperfectly.

In 1 Corinthians 13 that many of you read over and over last semester,

we see things imperfectly, but soon with perfect clarity.

And in heaven, we will see with perfect clarity.

And when we see Natalie, we say, oh, that's why.

Now I get it.

But we don't get it now.

But what I do know is that Jesus comes to us in our times of

confusion and times of being overwhelmed.

You know, the disciples had to deal with grief and death when Jesus

was crucified.

They had lived with him for three years every day.

And then they saw him taken away, totally unfairly, beaten, tortured.

They saw him.

They didn't get close, but they saw him on that cross, agonizing

death.

And then they ran.

And then they heard about the empty tomb, and they didn't really

understand it.

And two of those disciples were walking to Emmaus.

Shortly after that, they were on the road to Emmaus.

Emmaus was about seven miles outside Jerusalem.

They were walking on this road to Jerusalem, and they were talking

about, why.

Why did it have to happen that way?

And what's it mean?

This was an empty tomb.

Did they steal the body?

Are they trying to trick us?

You know, I mean, Jesus said he'd come back to life, but nobody

can come back to life.

That can't be true.

And they're talking, trying to figure this thing out in their grief

and their pain and their loss and their suffering and their confusion,

and all of a sudden, somebody else was with them, a third person.

They didn't recognize him at first.

He said, peace be with you.

And Jesus always brings peace when we're hurting the most.

They finally figured out it was Jesus.

They didn't recognize his resurrected body, but he was not

familiar.

They finally figured out that's who it was, and they just

had dinner with him.

They just had a dinner a week ago, and they saw him killed.

And they got all these questions, and he points them back

to Scripture, and he especially pointed them to Psalms

90, the one we were going to talk about today, the one I mentioned

in my email to you, the Psalm of Moses, where he says, teach us

to realize the brevity of life, that we may grow in wisdom.

Oh, the brevity of life.

We don't get it.

We don't face it.

We don't want to face it.

Why would we?

But we have to sometimes, and today is one of those times.

We've got to face it.

How many years do you have to live to get your money's worth, huh?

Natalie dies at 19, we say, that is tragic.

It's heartbreaking.

Somebody dies at 35, we say, that's so sad.

If they die at 45, we say, man, that's hard.

That's really hard.

If they die at 55, we say, that's too soon.

If they die at 65, we say, well, they got the most out of life.

If they die at 75, we say, they had a full life.

Lots to be thankful for at 85, pretty special.

And you give God glory.

But how many years do you have to live to get your money's worth?

I'm 70, and I'll tell you, from my perspective, life is too

short no matter how long you live.

I'm starting to get good at this now.

I don't know who in this room has the shortest or the longest to

live.

If I'd asked you that last week, who in this room has the shortest

or the longest time to live, you probably would have looked at

me, because I'm about the oldest one in the room.

But you know what?

It wasn't me.

It was Natalie.

This is the fifth time in my 30 years here that we've lost a student

who was part of this campus.

It's one about every six years.

So we don't know.

But when we have to face reality of death, that is so tragic,

I think we have to face the reality.

We've got two things in common.

The first is we're all going to die.

Now, we're going to lead very different lives.

We're going to have very different experiences and relationships

and outlooks and successes and failures and all that stuff is all

going to be different for every single one of us in here.

But we got one thing in common.

Everybody.

Everybody in this room is going to die.

There's no exit ramp.

No matter how hard you try, it's still going to happen.

If we kept more perspective on death, we would have a better perspective

on life.

But we don't like to think about death.

And understandably so I don't like to think about it.

But when we do, we see life priorities better.

But we also not only don't face the reality we're going to die,

we also have a distorted view of time.

Our understanding of time is not God's understanding of what real

time is.

Did you ever do timelines back when you were taking high school

history or middle school history?

You make a timeline of when things happen.

I like those.

I like to look at them and kind of see the proportion of how

time Measures up and how long it was between different stuff.

And.

And so if we were to make a timeline of our lives, let's say

you get to 80 years.

Okay?

So my proportion.

I'm going to start this where you were born.

And eight steps is going to be my timeline of life.

Okay?

So, one.

Whoops.

Two.

That's where Natalie made it.

Three, four, five, six, seven.

That's where I am.

And eight.

And that's about it.

Eight steps.

Long life.

But not really long in God's perspective, because to build my

timeline, you got to imagine with me that it extends out this

building.

And if you take my timeline back in time and extended out, when

you get about to the hallway out there, where you come out of

the chapel on the side, that's about where World War II is in my

timeline proportion.

And most of those teenagers who fought in World War II are dead

now.

And if you take the timeline on out to the parking lot, that's

about where the Declaration of Independence was.

And take the timeline up the hill, top of the hill, about the

time the printing press was invented and take it into State Street.

That's about where the Dark Ages were.

And if you can run it past Millsap's campus and down to the

railroad tracks, that's about the time Jesus came to Earth.

And if you run it on into West Jackson, out about where the zoo

is, about the time of David and Goliath.

And if we run it as far as we can go in history, we know, run it

all the way to Vicksburg, that's about the time of the dinosaurs.

And no matter where you lived on that spectrum, from Vicksburg

all the way to right there, you get eight steps at best.

Wherever your eight steps are on the line, or in the case of Natalie,

you get two steps.

But we still have a distorted view of time, because that's the

time we know.

But God said, I am the alpha and omega, the beginning and the

end.

I am the one who is, who always was, and who is still to come.

God always was.

Where does this timeline go?

Jesus said, I'm going to go to prepare a place for you, and when

everything's ready, I will come and get you.

That you'll open.

Always be with me.

Maybe the Psalms had a little more understanding of time that we

could grasp.

It said, for you, a thousand years are a passing day, as brief

as a few night hours.

Thousand years are like a few night hours because time is so long.

If we had a more accurate view of time back before the time we know

is recorded on Earth.

We got to take our timeline all the way into Louisiana and across

Texas and out to California and into the Pacific Ocean, Asia,

because God has always been.

And it's a time as a concept of time, we can't grasp because we

only know the eight steps we get in the journey or the steps we

read about in the history books.

And then if you really want to understand God's concept of time,

you got to take the timeline forward, because here's where we

are.

But you've got to take it down the hill to the Mitzi Irby building

and over to the Pearl river and out to the airport, to Meridian

and to Alabama and across Georgia and to the Atlantic Ocean

to Bermuda, Africa, the Middle East, India, China, on.

Because eternity goes on forever.

And that's still not the full description of time.

But too often we live and we plan, we prioritize and we even pray

as if our life is limited to these eight steps that we understand.

But God has promised eternal life.

So if we really understood time as God sees time, we would live

from an eternal perspective.

You know, in a letter to his student, Martin Luther said, you,

thoughts of God are too human.

And that's how our thoughts tend to be.

They're very human.

So if we really understood God's time and we really understood

eternity that Natalie started, we'd live life differently.

I think our commitment would be total.

You know, we say we want to follow Jesus.

I want to give God all I have, but there's this and there's that,

and fill in the blank of what this and that is.

But remember, Jesus never said, come to me once you get it

all fixed up, and I'll see if I'll love you then.

If you're cleaned up enough.

No, he said, just come to me how you are.

Come on, come to me and we'll work on it together.

When we commit all we have into the hands of God, the good and

the messy, then he helps us to change and transform from a sinful

nature so we can be connected to holy God.

I think if we really understood the limit of the 80 years

we have, or Natalie's Claes 19, we wouldn't settle for mediocrity

because you're here today.

You're special people in the educational world.

If you're just starting at Belhaven your first year, you got

more education than 75% of the world.

If you're a senior, you've got more education than 93% of the world.

Our faculty who have doctorates have more education than

99.9% of the world.

And if for no other reason than the educational level or we

have greater potential than most ever could dream about.

And then you come from the wealth of America.

You may say, I don't feel wealthy.

Well, you probably don't.

But compared to the rest of the world, you really are.

And you have the social standing of American citizenship

and able to be here.

But because God has given you greater abilities, you have greater

responsibility.

Jesus said.

I didn't say.

Jesus said, to whom much is given, much is required.

His rules, not mine.

To whom much is given, much is required.

Maybe our greatest sin is settling for mediocrity when we have

the potential to achieve so much more.

And there are lots of excuses for it.

You know, circumstances and hard knocks and all the choices.

And everybody else is mediocre, so why not?

But the truth is, God's given us eight steps on his line or for

Natalie too.

And we need to not settle.

We need to concentrate on the things that are lasting rather than

things that are uncertain and immediate.

We need to live life understanding.

This is a preparation for eternal life to come.

We need to focus our energy and our priorities on God rather

than the priorities of the world.

We develop the fruits of the spirit.

That's the test.

The fruits of the spirit.

Love and joy and peace and kindness and goodness, faithfulness,

gentleness and self control.

We need to be nicer to each other.

Life is too short.

Life is too complex.

Life is filled with too much frailty.

Our firstborn, Grady, he was premature by two months.

Scared of daylight, thought it was.

We didn't know what to do with this little tiny baby coming two

months early.

We hadn't been through the birthing classes yet.

We hadn't even started.

And all of a sudden, he's coming.

When he finally was born, there was a team of doctors right

there.

And they just swooped on him, about six of them.

It was overwhelming.

And they took him out.

We never even saw him.

I never saw his face until the next day.

And when we finally did see him, they had him in an incubator

because his life was so fragile and it was real testy because

his lungs might not be developed enough to survive.

We didn't know what would happen, all that.

And we stayed beside that incubator.

I think we were there 10 or 12 days.

Sad part is there were many incubators there where nobody was

there.

That was really sad.

But I remember one day we were there and Grady started kind of screaming

and we were trying to Settle.

You know, you can't touch him.

You can reach through in the glove thing and you can kind of rub

them, but you can't touch them because you can't be exposed to anything.

And he's just getting worse and worse.

And we were panicked, and Mary said, go find the doctor.

So I ran out to try to find the doctor and.

And finally found him.

And I said, please come.

We don't know.

And he said, I'll be right there.

I ran back to where she was, and when I got there, he was calm

and he was settled.

And I heard her singing to him, song from God, spelling way

back.

Day by day Day by day, O Lord, three things I pray to see thee more

clearly to love thee more dearly to follow thee more nearly

Day by day, folks, life is fragile, but day by day, that's really

all that matters.

It's really all that matters.

And they said something to us when we took Grady home after all

this.

He was still hooked up to stuff.

They said, it's going to be tough and you've got to be so careful

and all this stuff.

And they said, just remember this.

The days are going to be really long taking care of him, but

the years are short and they're going to fly by.

And we tried to live by that principle.

He's 32 now, bigger than I am, healthy.

The years are so short.

But, boy, those days were long.

In our long days, we need to remember the years are short.

And this life is a preparation for eternal life yet to come.

And so let's get rid of the stuff that holds us back from God

and let's focus on him.

Jeremiah did this.

You know, Jeremiah was a prophet to Judah.

I've told you before, they didn't have a Bible like we have

in those days.

So the prophets would have a word directly from God to the people.

And Jeremiah warned them of idolatry and injustice and neglecting

the relationship with God, those three things.

And you know what?

It hadn't changed in 3,000 years.

It hadn't changed.

Sinful nature is still the same thing.

Idolatry.

We got the idolatry of wealth and fame and power and control, control

and injustice.

You know, we put more injustice on each other than ever

comes from the outside.

We got to stop, be nice to folks.

If we really understood God's concept of time, I think we'd spend

more time connecting with people about what matters most and

less time.

Intentions that rob us of joy in our relationship with God.

The people of Judah were doing the same thing.

And neglecting their relationship with God.

And that's what the people of Judah did.

So Jeremiah said this to them.

He said, this is what the Lord says.

Don't let the wise man boast of their wisdom or the powerful boast

of their power or the rich boast of their riches.

But those who wish to boast should boast of this alone.

That they truly know me and understand that I am the Lord who

demonstrates unfailing love and who brings justice and righteousness

to the world.

And that I delight in these things.

I the Lord has spoken.

I didn't know, Natalie.

Some of you did.

Most of you didn't.

But I do know this.

The last thing Natalie heard in chapel last week was no eye is

seen, no ear is heard, no mind is conceived.

What God's prepared for those who love him.

And Natalie Black, last week in chapel, had no idea there was

heaven was prepared for her to arrive just four days later.

You know, I like life.

I don't want to die, but I will.

So I want to live life prepared for eternity.

And that's my prayer for you, too.

Let me pray.

Close us.

Lord, these aren't easy things to talk about.

It'd be easier to talk about happy stuff, but we need to.

We hate that we have to talk about it because we've lost one who

was right here among us just a week ago, who was loved by many.

Help us to understand that this life that we think is all there

is is just the beginning.

Because eternity is forever and heaven is for real.

And Natalie's there now.

And eventually we can be there, too, as we love and serve

and follow you.

In your name, we ask it.

Amen.

God bless.

Praying for all of you.

Praying for Justlyn especially.

Have a good spring break.