Precious in the Sight of the Lord

Precious in the sight of the LORD Is the death of His godly ones. 

(Psalm 116:15 NASB)

I affirm, brethren, by the boasting in you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily. 

(the Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 15:31 NASB)

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?" 

(John 11:25-26 NASB)

     Does anyone die too young?

     By some accounts, Jesus did.  I have friends and family members for whom many have said that they died an untimely death or that they 'died too young'.  As for me, in many ways I feel that I did not die young enough, so to speak.  Please indulge me to explain.

     As I write this, I am in Mt. Lebanon, PA, where my family lived from 1983 - 1999.  When I was in college, my parents went into full time ministry here in the Pittsburgh area with the Navigators.  By many accounts it was a fruitful time of ministry, linked to vibrant local churches (mostly Presbyterian out here), with many coming to Christ and growing in Him.  There was much to thank God for and much to rejoice about.  While there were trying times financially, they were very joyful times.  Entering 1987, we had no idea of both the depths of the trials nor the heights of rejoicing in God we would experience in the coming years.  Diagnosed with ovarian cancer at the age of forty-four, we would find out later that my mom, Janet Catherine Nutter Twombly, was not expected to live much past another year.  After nearly a full year of remission in 1988 and a continuing battle with cancer, the Lord took her home on April 2, 1990, nearly twenty years ago.

'Precious in the sight of the Lord...'

     By this time Betty and I had married and we were expecting our first child, Lauren Elizabeth, in about eight weeks, having gotten pregnant within three weeks of our wedding.  Well, in less than two weeks from my Mom's death Betty would be in the hospital, and less than two weeks after that we welcomed Lauren into the world on April 19, 1990.  Less than six months later we became pregnant again with our son Luke Daniel, and less than three months after that Lauren would be diagnosed with cancer, retinoblastoma.  In the middle of her season of radiation treatments, Dad got remarried to a godly younger woman named Mary.  Less than five months after that, while visiting family in Pittsburgh, Luke made his arrival five weeks earlier than expected, on May 26, 1991.  Sitting in my parents' home after nearly two years of marriage, with two young children, one of whom had survived cancer, surrounded by loving family and friends, yet without my mother, I felt incredibly alone and abandoned.  I was completely spent, with no strong sense of what was going on or what to do next.  What was God doing?

'Precious in the sight of the Lord…'

      I had much to be thankful for.  Betty was (and is) an incredible wife.  I had two beautiful children and enjoyed the incredible, tangible support of many family members and friends.  I had a good job with an understanding boss who gave me great flexibility in terms of time off to deal with all of these events.  Yet, the pain, rather than subsiding, seemed only to intensify.  I would do anything to have my mom back!  How would I ever recover?

'Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death...'

     What I realize now is that God was mercifully killing my selfish desires, my idealism in terms of a life that may have looked godly but was only a charade.  I had an idea of how my life after college should go, and I was so far off course that I was beginning to realize that I would never get back to that ideal.  What I was starting to realize was that God had something far better in mind, something far more abundantly beyond all that I could ask or think (see Ephesians 3:20).  God was causing me to die to my selfish ideals and to live to His perfect plans for my life.  I knew enough about God that in my mind I believed that God caused all things to work together for good (Romans 8:28), and that these were perfect circumstances for my spiritual growth (see Isaiah 5:1-4).  I wrote about this concept in an earlier blog entry, 'The Cost of Christlikeness'.  My emotions were slow to catch up to what my mind believed.  I needed some help to get there.

'Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of...'

     I began to receive help from friends and family members to see what I could not see in my pain.  God was using these circumstances as a sort of 'greenhouse' for my faith, causing me to joyfully embrace His will for my life and to develop the character of Christ in my life.  In ways I could never design, I was being prepared by God to be a better husband, father, spiritual leader, worker, and servant in all things.  While my growth is not nearly as fast as I would often like it to be, it is far faster and better as God moves me to die to self and to live to and for Him.

    I have been blessed to watch others die in the Lord, both as a daily lifestyle, and literally, and have learned much from them.  Since the death of my mom, there is perhaps no one I have learned more from in this respect than Ethan Chon, a young husband and father whose journey you can read about on his Xanga page and blog.  As his body was in the process of dying, Ethan said to me with a painful smile, 'The Lord has removed from me all of my false trusts.'  He could see more clearly than most others around him the sustaining power of Christ.

'Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His godly ones.' - Psalm 116:15


May we regard as precious what the Lord Himself regards as precious.

May we recognize that to die - now and in the future - is to die to death and to experience fullness of life in Christ.  Praise God!

In His Grip,

Mark

P.S. The song 'Higher Ways' by Steven Curtis Chapman is a God-exalting song that has been of great encouragement to me in these things.  I invite you to enjoy it here: