Just this week, from a woman who appears to be very kind and well-meaning, I heard a comment about God that I believe would have put me in a place very far off from God had I heard it years ago when I was at quite a different place in my relationship with him. This woman, in reference to a young mother (of multiple very young children) who just moved on from this realm after a cancer diagnosis, said that God must have needed her much more in Heaven than we do down here. And well, I just don’t think such statements, which I hear rather often, are accurate at all. In fact, I think that putting thoughts like this out there makes God much less desirable than he really is–and makes him seem not so good at all.
If we who follow him believe what God has revealed to us about his nature–through Scripture, through his Christ–then we need to be oh so careful regarding the words we choose to use down here, especially in the face of tragedy. God, if truly omnipotent, does not need one single blasted thing from any of us, much less the life of a most precious mother with beautiful little ones to raise up. Does God want us, his creation made in his image, to be with him? Yes, I believe he does. Does God want his creation to die young, leaving families behind with broken hearts and a gaping hole in their existence that will never be perfectly filled on this side of Heaven? No, he doesn’t. If he did, I’d have a very hard time following him.
I don’t believe for one second that anyone’s time here is ever done simply because God needs them. Again, he has never needed anything from us. We do, though, need him. And for reasons none of us can yet fully discern, God’s interventions into the affairs of humankind do often appear haphazard–this person over here gets an extension, gets healed in this realm, and that one over there doesn’t. I don’t understand this, and I won’t pretend to do so. I can only say that the story endings down here that we classify as “unhappy” ones are not God’s fault. I can say too that if we give God a chance to do so–no matter how broken we are, no matter what we see all around us–he will in some way redeem all of the “unhappy.” And he won’t do so because he has to; he’ll do so simply because he loves us enough to. That’s just who and how God is.
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