Stubborn Hope and Soft Rescues
Romans 8:28 is one of those famous verses we learn early on as Christians.
“And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.”
On a normal reading, during a normal year, most of us are more concerned with the promise in the verse than its intended audience.
And then a year like 2020 comes along...
Reading Romans 8:28 at 3 or 4 in the morning during one of my many Coronanxiety witching hours, I realized that it wasn’t the first part of the verse about how “everything will work out OK” that encouraged me anymore.
It was the last part: the part I had somehow skipped over since I first heard this verse 20 years ago… the part that mentions the stipulations of such a wonderful promise that has made this verse a comfort to so many:
“those who love God and are called according to his purpose.”
This year of global distress has given us a unique opportunity to watch what happens when every person in the world goes through the same struggle all at once. Most tragedies or difficult circumstances happen to us individually, like an unwelcome diagnosis or a car accident. We deal with it while the world keeps turning, minding its own business.
But I have seen two things happen during this collective trial:
God sustaining and sheltering His people (to a miraculous degree, in some instances)
The world flailing about like a drunk octopus, spouting out hastily contrived mantras like “we’re all gonna die,” and “this XYZ is the new normal”
Watching everyone around me either succumb to the first option or the second has done away with a lot of my fuzzy lined theology about the sovereignty of God, the purpose of trials, and whether or not God is serious when He talks about His children being sent into the world, “but not of it.” (Matthew 28:19, John 17:14-19)
I am a person who cares deeply about my society and culture. I want and expect God to cast a Romans 8:28 fairy dust blessing over everyone because I know He cares about this crazy world more than I do. I want things to just work out OK for everyone.
But the only promise in the Bible awaiting the world at large is that some day Jesus will come back, judge this planet and restore Himself as the rightful ruler of it. And if you’ve read the book of Revelation, you know things will get really bad before He sets His wounded feet on the earth again. The world is never given the promise that “everything will work out OK,” but we, as His people, are given that promise (Psalm 91:7-8).
“But the only promise in the Bible awaiting the world at large is that some day Jesus will come back, judge this planet and restore Himself as the rightful ruler of it. ”
This is a time in history when we must embrace the spiritual differences between "us and them" – something that has always been around us, but has been softened by cultural prosperity and ease. We can do this by joyfully, peacefully and fiercely living into our allegiance to God alone. Never, ever for the sake of pride or exclusion (even during the Exodus, there was a “mixed multitude” that left Egypt with the Hebrews in Exodus 12:38) but for the sake of our soul’s peace and for the watching world to see.
Our soul’s peace
The way this practically plays out for me has to do with a perspective shift. When I see things in the perishing world around me that make me despair, Romans 8:28 has given me permission to not focus on that dysfunction.
It doesn’t mean I don’t care about the fresh hell that comes at us on the news everyday and that I don’t pray for God’s mercy to flow over it.
It simply means I don't need to partake of the hopelessness flavored Wheaties that the world eats for breakfast right now.
I am a citizen of a different place. (Philippians 3:20)
I am a pilgrim on a journey with “...glory just around the corner.” (I Peter 4:13 MSG)
The struggles of our world are between the world and God. Our struggle with Him ended when we became His children. Yes, we still live on this planet...but not really, am I right? Not in the ways that matter (Colossians 3:1-4). Heck, they could throw us all out naked on the street right now and burn our houses down and we would still be insanely rich in Jesus.
The world can and will implode on itself all it wants. It’s current and pending ruination, though hard to watch, does not change God’s promises to me as His child or His power towards my sure deliverance, whatever that may look like.
The “us and them” in Romans 8:28 means God guides this planet in and out of judgements and trials, all the while proving to the entire world that we are the most well taken care of kids in the universe (Psalm 46). He places a fourth Person in the furnace, even though three were thrown in. He shuts the powerful jaws of lions. And He “works all things together” so that times of great evil don’t destroy us like they technically should, but instead purify us, making us more alive and more free.
For the world to see
The challenge is not just to believe in the eventual salvation promised to us when we die, but in the ways God personally rescues us now. Our struggles in this life are a set-up: a stage carefully set to display God’s delivering power to the rubber-necking world around us.
This has always been how God proves His presence and reality to the outside world: through the contrast that occurs when frail mortals carry immortal blessing within them (2 Corinthians 4:7).
It needs to be said that rescue, as we prefer it, is not always the rescue that God has in mind for us. Sometimes Him rescuing us means He gives us peace during heartache, trust during anxiety, a remembrance of His steadfast character during cataclysmic upheaval. It is not less of a miraculous rescue just because it’s not our idea of rescue (2 Corinthians 12:7-10). Sometimes rescue to us is the unbelieving world’s worst nightmare: death itself (1 Corinthians 15:50, 53-57).
“It needs to be said that rescue, as we prefer it, is not always the rescue that God has in mind for us.”
Don’t forget that our neighbors next door or down the street who don’t have Christ are receiving no such comfort. If you were them, you’d probably be really excited to receive God’s often bestowed, quietly whispered “soft rescues.” I think we get a little forgetful sometimes of where we came from – how before we were His, crying out to God and receiving His comfort and peace used to not happen, but now is the norm. Sure things can get hard, but we talk to God and He talks back. Let’s not take that lightly.
And now, a little Bible story
In John 11, Lazarus dies and Jesus raises him from the dead. What John makes very clear in verses 4-6 and 14-15 is that Jesus intentionally let Lazarus die. On purpose. Or rather, for a purpose. This was a set-up.
But Martha and Mary can’t see behind the curtain of Jesus’ tardiness and Martha is ready with her fierce, strong personality to confront Jesus when He finally arrives at the scene of her highest pain.
Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now, I know that God will give you whatever you ask.”
Her last sentence is a hint. A hope against hope. A flicker of belief that Jesus could do the most incredible miracle and raise her brother. It’s a thinly veiled suggestion that she hopes He catches. Her tenacious heart still believes in rescue, and judging by what He says next, it’s apparent Jesus does too.
Jesus told her, “Your brother will rise again.”
“Yes,” Martha said, “He will rise when everyone else rises, at the last day.”
Notice her generic, catechism-esque answer in response to Jesus’ very personal, about-to-happen-in-5-minutes declaration about her situation. Her answer was technically right, though she was also obviously not deriving a lot of comfort from it.
But He wasn’t looking for her catechism answer.
He was describing her rescue. He let Lazarus die on purpose and now He was going to cash that in and build God’s glory on the ruins of Martha’s and Mary’s hearts.
Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying… Do you believe this, Martha?
“Yes, Lord,” she told him, “I have always believed you are the Messiah, the Son of God. When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary.” (John 11:21-28)
She pronounces Him Messiah (go Martha!) and abruptly leaves the conversation to go find Mary, not knowing what to do with this hope starting to kindle in her heart. Should she believe Jesus’ words at face value? That perhaps her brother’s death is not like all other deaths?
Like Mary and Martha, I too lost a brother. He and I were in high school at the time. Two boys went into the frigid Pacific Ocean at a beach birthday party to take a quick, foolish swim, and only one came out alive. God did not save my brother physically that day, although He did more importantly save his soul mere months before his death.
My idea of rescue in that situation was granted to the other boy’s family, not to mine.
But my brother’s death was not like all other deaths, because he and I are citizens of another place. And each time I miss him or ache over him or crumple into a mash of tears over him, all of which still happen to this day (because that’s what love and loss does to you), I see God softly and powerfully rescue me over and over again, building beauty over the top of my heart’s ashes. Sorrow looks and feels different when it is experienced alongside deep hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). This fact alone is one of the ways God comes to our rescue in those dark, mournful depths.
How we, His people, experience 2020 or any other trial does not have to be and should not be the same as the world at large does. I am not saying this from a position of success in this area, but rather as a remedial student of it. Every year used to be called “The Year of our Lord,” and I wish we could bring that back because it reminds us who has the right to direct the events of that year. My 2020 is actually my Lord’s 2020 and the way I process and experience it, no matter how much I have been challenged during this time, has different rules and different definitions of success than those of our tepid culture at large.
No matter what happens between God and the world, God’s definition of rescue is afoot here for His people at all times, despite all odds.
And that is something, like Martha, to feel strangely and stubbornly hopeful about.
Paul the Apostle himself was stubborn about it. “He did rescue us from mortal danger,” he declares in 2 Corinthians 1:10 about his near death experiences for the gospel, “and he will rescue us again. We have placed our confidence in him, and he will continue to rescue us.”