About a month before my younger brother passed away
in the hospital of cardiac failure, he sent me the following message. “Someday I’ll know why God gave me a bum ticker (heart). I believe that in some weird way that I can’t see or have considered, it will be good.” My reply was that God is good and we don’t see how but even in the worst of things he has something good intended for us. My brother replied “Amen”. That was the last spiritual conversat
ion I had with him. In the nearly three years since, I have yet to delete the text message. All our conversations (phone and text) after that revolved around how he was doing physically and how we looked forward to seeing each other at Christmas. My wife and I attended his funeral in early December. Christmas was difficult without his presence.
In the years since, the song “10,000 Reasons” by Matt Redman has carried special meaning to me. The last verse is the kicker.
“And on that day when my strength is failing
The end draws near and my time has come
Still my soul will sing Your praise unending
Ten thousand years and then forevermore”
I’ve wondered what faith it take to express such praise in the midst of suffering. I imagine myself in that place one day. I think of Ecclesiastes 12 and the picture painted there of the end of one’s days. In 2008 my father rather unexpectedly passed away of heart failure at age 67. Five years later my little broth
er, just 43 years old, had his fail after a history of heart problems. The circumstances were unique. My father and brother had different health issues that led to the same end. When my father passed away, I had a peace that God in his sovereignty knew where his eternity would be, even if I did not. Though he was a great man in so many respects, I did not fully know his faith. My comfort was in the goodness and mercy of God. My brother on the other hand was an odd one. He expressed a clear faith as a teen and yet later in life was so filled with anger and pain that he lashed out at my faith often. I had gone from spiritual role model to punching bag. I suspect his bitterness was in part due to his life not turning out as he expected and as mine had in terms of stability and family. We had a strained relationship for the better part of a decade. It was this reality that made his text message so meaningful to me. I sensed that God was comforting him in his final days.
If God was comforting him, was my brother among the elect? I won’t dive deeply into my theology here but I do believe that God ultimately decides who are his people and who are not. My reading of the Bible includes seeing clearly that faith is a gift and God in his sovereignty decides who are his and who are not. John Piper in an exposition of Romans 11 pushed me beyond my doubts about this.
So, if my brother could praise God and expect that God had something good to come from his premature death, was this a clear indication of his salvation? Despite his behavior in his last decade of life? And what was that good that God had for him? I have a hunch.
Something odd happened the day I learned of his death. It was later in the evening when something triggered the flood lights
on our back porch. I often look to see what triggers the motion censored lights and had never saw anything other than wind. This time though I saw two deer in my back yard. That in itself is not odd. We have seen evidence of deer for years. They eat some of our plants. But I had never actually seen them in our yard and have never seen them since. This would not mean anything to me except for a previous experience. When I was a teen, God protected me from danger one night at a camp. I was alone in the wilderness, having been sent off with a compass and few provisions. I was to make camp at a determined location but, despite being pretty good at orienteering, I could not find the location. What I did not know at the time was that a predator would be looking for me at that location. When I could not find my place, I saw a deer unusually close to me. Deer in the wild are normally quick to run but this one stopped and looked at me for a while. We stared into each others eyes and there was something deeply comforting in the look it gave me. So, I settled in the place where the deer had been, spent the night and returned to the camp the next morning. I later learned that the predator hunted me the night before but could not find me. God protected me. Now I found myself looking at a deer in my back yard and he spent a few moments looking my direction before he wandered off. And my brother had just died unexpectedly. My conclusion was nothing less than that God sent a messenger to remind me that he is looking after me.
So, what good might God have had in mind for my brother’s death? I learned after his passing that he and his new wife (married just 14 months earlier) were looking to get into the marijuana business. Medical marijuana specifically. Yet, with the legalization of pot in Colorado, his former wife quickly moved there and with the help of some friends (Beatles reference intended) started running a business supplying those who distribute weed. Had my brother been alive to be part of this, I suspect his life would have taken a very different direction. My sister in law, who had at one time been in rehab herself, became an avid pot smoker. Perhaps my brother was spared from this reality. I don’t know. One thing I do strongly suspect is that God’s elect are God’s elect even if they spend a decade resisting his love and grace. Otherwise, how could he express that “Someday I’ll know why God gave me a bum ticker. I believe that in some weird way that I can’t see or have considered, it will be good.”
Leave a Reply