When A Loved One Dies

The Bradleys received the grim news with shock. At first they found it hard to believe that their 32-year old son had been tragically killed in a ghastly car accident. It seemed more surreal than real. Little wonder, when a caller who had introduced himself as Sergeant Fisher first told Mrs. Bradley about the incident, she assumed he’d got the wrong person or was at worst only playing some malicious hoax. But the woman was alarmed when the policeman kept on phoning back. His voice was freighted with seriousness. Then she quickly grabbed her car keys and raced her way to the prestigious Murphy Elliottes University Teaching Hospital.

At the hospital mortuary, Mrs. Bradley met a scene of stark horror. She found Jill’s lifeless body lying on a stretcher, completely covered in blood.
The sight was so sickening that she fainted. It took medics several hours to resuscitate her.

Now back at home, and with her grief still unabated, Mrs. Bradley held Jill’s picture. She recalled vividly their last phone conversation the previous night. The deceased had called to announce that he’d be returning home the next day after fifteen months of peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan. She was elated and planned to throw him a party. He was so full of life anyone could have thought he’d live a hundred years. She remembered having prayed to God to grant him a safe journey. Then the next thing she heard about him was sad news. She couldn’t understand why God would allow death to snuff life out of their son.
At this point, Mrs. Bradley couldn’t suppress her anger at God. In a fit of rage she shrilled: ‘God why us?’ ‘How come you couldn’t save our son despite our commitments to your cause?’ ‘Is this how you reward your children?’ ‘God this is unfair.’ ‘Why?’ her cries reverberated across the sleepy street.

When death snatches someone so dear to us, we’re overcome with grief. It’s like our world has crumbled completely. This is natural. To not mourn the sad demise of someone we love would suggest that the person didn’t mean anything to us. On one occasion Jesus wept because of his friend Lazarus (John 11:35).

However, some grief-stricken Christians do something weird in the course of their mourning. They question God why He didn’t avert the painful death of a loved one. Like the Mrs. Bradley in our illustration, they query God why He failed to prevent a tragic event in their lives despite their good work. This is wrong; those who display such a bad attitude are ignorant of two eternal truths. Let me explain.

A Reality of Life

Tragedy is intrinsic to life, and everyone will have a measure of it. Whether one is a Christian or not is pointless in this regard. Job 5:6-7 states: 

‘Although affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground;
Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.’

When we become God’s children, He doesn’t promise us an earthly life devoid of pain and sorrow; it would be sheer ignorance to believe otherwise. For believers, as for any other people, life’s not a bed of roses but a mixture of good and evil, ups and downs, certainties and uncertainties. We’ve not been promised a smooth voyage but a safe landing; God doesn’t say we’ll not pass through a fiery furnace or sail through deep and turbulent waters―He only promises to be with us during those dark chapters of our lives.

‘When you go through deep waters and great trouble, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown! When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up―the flames will not consume you.’
―Isaiah 43:2, The Living Bible.

Think of it. If Christians are exempt from the travails of this life then our lives would have been bereft of troubles like they have it in a never-never land. The Bible wouldn’t have contained a promise of paradise earth in the future. If Christians are free from tragedy, Rev. S. B. J. Oshoffa wouldn’t have died after a car crash; Pastor Bimbo Odukoya wouldn’t have been killed in a plane crash; Mrs Abiodun Kumuyi would be alive to this very moment; one minister of God wouldn’t have passed away in the prime of life; his wife wouldn’t have died of breast cancer few years after.

Believers who know this truth don’t angrily lash out at God when pummelled by the Grim Reaper. Instead, they look up to Him for hope and comfort. Like Job, they react to sad news by declaring the words of chapter 1 verse 21 of the book that bears that man’s name

Tragedy Not Always Evil

Unbeknown to many Christians, tragedy isn’t always hundred per cent evil. The problem is they only focus on the evil side of it. I believe there’s at least a trace of good in evil. Sometimes God in His infinite mercy allows calamitous events in our lives for a purpose. He may not reveal that purpose to us, but whatever the reason it’s for our benefit. His plan is to ultimately bring us to an ‘expected end’ (Jeremiah 29:11).
For example, God may allow a pastor to lose his daughter to a disease as a divine retribution, to test him as He did to Job, to enable him learn to trust Him the more, to strengthen him in his Christian walk, or even to prevent the departed soul from backsliding.

A friend of mine lost his brother after a protracted illness. When he called to inform me, he was traumatised. I texted him to comfort him. I told him that sometimes God uses death to help us. I asked what if his brother were to be alive but in great pain? What if they had to pray to God to call him home? What I told him wasn’t an attempt to give him a false sense of comfort but the truth. We don’t want to see our loved ones suffer indescribable pain or become insane before they pass on, yet when God suddenly takes them away in order to avoid such situations, we’re mad at Him. How ironic!
May God give you strength to remain sinless during your troubled hours.

Further Reading: Job 2:10; 14:1; Isaiah 48:10; John 16:33

"There is a saying in Tibetan, ‘Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.’ No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful an experience is, if we lose our hope, that’s our real disaster."
―Dalai Lama XIV

Sarah's Story

Sarah and Mike met at Candy’s birthday party. They clicked straight away. Mike evinced fine qualities that really turned Sarah on. In Sarah’s own words: ‘Mike treated me so good, as real ladies should be treated. He was full of love, nice and a whole bunch of excitement every girl craves for in a man. In a nutshell, Mike swept me off my feet; and I was ready to go at any length just to be with him.’

Even good people have their own Achilles’ heel. Mike wasn’t any different as he was a consistent flirt who could go for ‘anything under the skirt―just to prove his self-centred. . .ego’. In short, Mike was a lecher.

Sarah couldn’t stop loving Mike despite his promiscuous lifestyle. One day, the poor woman had to travel to  the UK on an official assignment. Her ‘Perfect Lover’ dropped her off at the airport and hurried back home before she could even board the plane, claiming that he had an appointment. Unfortunately, or perhaps
fortunately, Sarah’s flight was cancelled and rescheduled for the following day. That disappointment forced her to return home, where she caught Candy, her cousin, and Mike red-handed in the throes of passionate sex. Needless to say, Sarah was traumatised and ended up in hospital.

Candy cried regrettably at the hospital; she confessed to Sarah that she didn’t intend to hurt her. She claimed that it was Mike who was chasing her around. As Sarah would later discover to her dismay, Candy’s remorse was a mere façade.

Mike on his part flooded his heartbroken sweetheart with lovely cards and flowers. He even sent the members of his family to plead with her for him. Sarah shared her story on a radio programme and people advised her to give Mike another chance. She did; thereafter, they had a child.

Sarah’s phone rang one day. The speaker on the far end was an anonymous caller from the UK. She informed Sarah that Mike made regular forays to the UK in order to visit one woman whose name was Candy. The woman proved her claim beyond a shadow of doubt when she e-mailed Sarah a photo of Mike and Candy. Candy was pregnant for Mike in the pic.

Sarah rushed back to the radio station which had earlier featured her story in one of its programmes. The anchor of that particular programme e-mailed Mike to investigate the matter. Mike’s reply was studded with insulting words. He even brazenly said that he’d stop loving Candy only if she stopped loving him. The anchor forwarded Mike’s reply to Sarah’s mailbox. She could now read the writing on the wall.

 My Opinion

I think Sarah made a huge mistake by starting a relationship with Mike without first seeking and obtaining God’s approval. This might sound kind of weird in the 21st century, but that’s the simple truth. Human feelings aren’t infallible and are therefore just too insufficient to form the basis for any relationship―conviction must come from God. The Bible at Proverbs 14:12 says: ‘There is a way which seems right to a man, but its way is the way of death.’

Didn’t Sarah know that inherent in relationships we develop outside the Creator’s will are pitfalls, regrets, disappointment and heartbreaks? Now, letting God choose for us doesn’t make us cranks; it rather indicates that we acknowledge the fallibility of human feelings.

A pastor once had a dream in which he couldn’t make it to the last floor of a building because the stairway was somehow complicated. However, something miraculously carried him off to his desired destination after praying to God. After this, the man found himself struggling with a flat tyre. He refused to pray this time, believing in his own self. And he couldn’t get the tyre replaced in that dream.God’s message for that pastor was very clear: ‘You can  do nothing without My help―not even a task as simple as changing a flat tyre! You run into trouble when you try to do things your own way.’

Likewise, putting God first in all we do―including choosing a spouse―saves us lots of unnecessary troubles. Relying on our feelings and current situations when deciding whom to marry won’t get us anywhere, ‘for by strength shall no man prevail’ (1 Samuel 2:9).  ‘Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths’ (Proverbs 3:5; see also Zechariah 4:6).

Sarah also erred in that she refused to let go of Mike after catching him with his trousers down in bed with her cousin. Instead, she allowed others to influence her decision, forgetting that every decision we make has consequences, and that when these consequences arrive they will be ours alone to bear. A friend may cause us to make the wrong decision, but we’ll in most cases bear the dire consequences of that decision alone. It’s like you grabbing a live coal bare-handed on the recommendation of a friend. Whose hand gets seared? Yours of course.

I know it’s hard letting go of someone we truly love, but sometimes we’ve got to do it anyway. This is for our own good. Holding tightly on to someone we should let go of brings sorrow and not happiness.

My Advice

This piece of advice is for you the reader of this post. Do you have a Mike in your life? Please let go of him NOW before it’s too late. You don’t have to learn your lesson the hard way, do you?

You probably quip, ‘Gabriel, let me give him some more time to change’. A brilliant idea! But what if he never changes? Changing yourself could be more difficult than you think, let alone changing another person. There’s no point trying to work it out when it’s obvious that the relationship can’t work. All you need to do is ask God for the courage to walk away. And as you reflect on this article, I pray the Lord will open your eyes and cause you to make the right decision. Amen.

NB: The real names of the people in this article have been with-held.

We should give to God in our hearts the same place that he holds in the universe

―Anonymous

You're Unique

The word’s population is said to have hit a whacking great 7 billion! This figure is expected to rise up the notch in the future. Despite the sheer immensity of people strewn across the globe, no two individuals are exactly the same. Even identical twins are discriminated on the basis of fingerprint, genetic make-up and personality. It follows that everyone is unique.

Since everyone’s unique, you too are unique. You’re unique because there isn’t another you. There isn’t another you because what God has deposited in you can’t be found in anyone else. It can’t be acquired at school; neither can it be traded for all the money at CBN. So, you  simply aren’t like another nail in a carpenter’s toolbox or a spare tyre in a car boot.

The only you in existence is you. You may have siblings, relatives or even non-relatives who share a striking resemblance with you, and yet you’re not them and they aren’t you either. You aren’t here for a business-as-usual assignment. No one else can have a positive impact on the world the way you’ve been designed to. Therefore, ensure you awaken the sleeping giant in you.

You’re the only you in the world. Regardless of what traducers think of you, you’re precious. They may think that you’re expendable, but you’re indispensable. You aren’t the product of some blind evolutionary processes; rather, you’re the handiwork of an Intelligent Designer. You’ve been ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’. So, you aren’t just another Rachael, Emily, Audrey, Eric, Bob or Gabriel.

You aren’t a biological accident―you’ve got a void to fill, a destiny to fulfil. You’re a man or woman of dominion; you carry in you something which commands admiration. Yes, you’re an embodiment of authority, power, design, perfection and glory. Your creation is the climax of God’s creative acts, and in it the works of the previous five days find meaningful purpose. Please don’t disappoint God who has invested so much in you; the world to which He has sent you and yourself. Live your dream. The moon isn’t your limit―it’s your starting point!

Always remember that you are unique as everyone else is unique

―Anonymous