It Is Finished

Tragedy has a way of blowing past all of the fluff in our lives and digging into the core of our beings. It makes you go from the chaos and frivolousness of a Monday night pick-up volleyball game to pondering your mortality in a lamp-lit dorm room instantaneously. And the hits keep coming.

Grace Zimmerman was a 16 year old sophomore from Minnesota. At 2:47PM on Monday afternoon she was in a car accident and went home to be with her Lord. In an instant, she was taken from her family. Her loved ones. Her dance team. Her earthly life. I grew up with Grace and her family. I won't pretend like I knew her past the surface level over the past 10 years, but I can say this about her: She was joyful. Her passion was dance and she used that art form to spread the joy that came from her relationship with Christ. And the other thing I can say is this: She was so, so loved. By her family, her friends, people she barely knew, people all over the country, and most of all by her Savior.

On a wintry, Wisconsin morning in 2017, Cobe Kelly was driving to school. A routine he and every one of us are familiar with. However, one flipped car later, he was rushed to Milwaukee in a coma. As a school and as a church, we prayed for him constantly. For what felt like ages, nothing happened. But finally, Cobe woke up. He slowly recovered functions in his body and through the help of many dedicated individuals, he was able to graduate with his class in 2019. Last week, Cobe was in a separate accident in Arizona. And once again, he was brought to the ICU in critical condition. And once again, the same group of people (and many others) have surrounded him in prayer. As God seems to be helping him recover, it seems that Cobe is on the long road to recovery for the second time in three years.

Benjamin Nasser is the brother of our campus pastor here at Liberty University. He has been a constant presence ever since I've been here, not because he has many words to say or because he desires to be in front of people, but because he knows how to worship honestly. If you ask anyone at Liberty about Benji, the first thing they will tell you is that he is convinced of God's love for him and vice versa. He is a worship leader from side stage. And he is so loved by this community. And as we watch him battle cancer, he has taught us, as only a Nasser can, that "convinced people convince people."

There is no easy answer to tragedy. It comes without warning, tears down our lives, and then has the audacity to ask us to keep living like nothing has happened. And when it seems like tragedies are stacking on top of each other, boy does it feel like drowning. And I want to scream louder than ever "Come Lord Jesus!" 

I can point to Scripture easily, such as 1 Thessalonians 4, which tells Christians to encourage one another in times of tragedy, for we do not mourn as those without hope. Those who pass away will rise again! But like Martha at Lazarus' tomb, that hope seems to ring silent in the pit. And that's why Jesus weeps with us. We know that we will see those who sleep in Christ again. But until Jesus' return, that first death is inevitable. Rather than tell us to simply have more faith and stop mourning, the Word became flesh so that he might empathize with our pain. He cries with us. Think about that again. The all-powerful creator of every one of the billions and billions of galaxies has brought himself to us so that he might feel our pain. Not only feel it, but provide hope in it. Our God has the one and only answer to tragedy: his finished work on the cross. 

"It is done, it is finished 

Christ has won, He is risen.

Grace is here 

Love has triumphed over death forever 

It is done, it is finished 

Mercy won, I'm forgiven 

Sing His name, He is worthy of our praise, 

Jesus"

-Passion, It Is Finished

There are three things we can do in tragedy. Grace teaches us to be joyful. This is a joy that isn't rooted in emotion, provision, or peace. It's rooted in the positional righteousness we have through Christ. Our joy in trials points others to our eternal and living hope. Cobe teaches us to persevere. As he sits in the ICU for the second time in three years, he must feel every right to give up. But he won't, because Cobe is a fighter. And that strength doesn't come from himself, it is the power to endure that comes from knowing what waits for those who endure trials for the Lord. Benji teaches us to adore and worship through everything. Even in the pain, even in the unknown, we worship with the intention of reflecting all glory to God. We hold this treasure in fickle, misshapen jars of clay. 

Dear friends, as we struggle, may we have steadfast joy in the Lord, emotional perseverance from the Spirit, and the knowledge that God gleans all the glory in every situation.

Thank you, Grace.

Thank you, Cobe.

Thank you, Benji.

“Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Romans 5:2-5

Stability

"Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words."
1 Thessalonians 4:17-18

I don't know how much I have to say about this. Only that the best encouragement any person can receive is knowing that this isn't all there is. There's life after death. Love after pain. Community after corruption. Peace after anxiety. Stability after change. There is a day coming when I will, with the collective body of Christ, look my Savior in the eyes and know that I'm home. And in light of that, what can't I handle on this earth?

I'm not in some emotional intersection of life, I'm not undergoing any undo relational turmoil, but what I am experiencing is the ever-growing realization that life changes. People come and go, my sphere of influence ebbs and flows, I'm on cloud nine one day and scared of next week the next, but I can be confident that the God who is king at the telos of all things is the God who said "never will I leave you, never will I forsake you." The God who loves me enough to sacrifice his Son for me. It's the simplest message in Christianity, but it is always exactly the one I need to hear. Where will I be in a year? Quite literally: God only knows. Who will I be with? What will I be doing? How much money will I have? I couldn't answer one of those questions. But rather than be filled with anxiety concerning those questions, I refer back to the words of Paul:

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;

    we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:31-39

Come, Lord Jesus.