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God does not cause suffering and death. Sometimes it seems that way. Sometimes we say things such as, 'God took him or her,' or 'To everything there is a season ...,' a quotation from the Scripture which we can all too quickly misinterpret.

But God does not cause suffering and death. Nor does God let them happen. We say that, too, don’t we? We ask questions such as, 'Why in the world would God let something like this happen?'

And we’re not wrong to ask. Even Jesus shouted, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me,' from the cross, and I think God had to understand his feelings.

Still, it needs to be said clearly, especially in this setting, that God does not cause death. God creates.

God creates — that’s the message of the Scripture here today. God created the earth. God created Israel. Through Jesus — the Word, the light which overcomes the darkness, the one who was with God from the beginning — God created all things, including the new life which comes in resurrection.

We always have to struggle with pain and death. Did you hear Paul’s words in his letter to the Colossians? Those words sound noble, but they come in the midst of a discussion of Paul’s sufferings.

'Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake,' Paul tells the people at Colossae, 'and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is the church.'

He’s talking of his witness to the Savior through the church, of course, but he’s talking about his suffering, too. He’s saying that he has wondered why he has to suffer, and he has decided his suffering is a completion of Christ’s suffering.

Paul struggled, too. Paul wondered why things happen as they do.

'He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation,' Paul says of Jesus, 'for in him all things were created, in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities — all things were created through him and for him.'

Through his death he brought peace by the blood of the cross, and because of that, we are one with God in Jesus. That’s what the great apostle says.

So God does not cause suffering and death. God creates. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have to struggle with the suffering and death of one we love. Of course we do, and in fact, the people of the Bible struggled, too.

In one sense, the whole story of the Bible is the story of how people came to see, by struggling themselves, that God was on their side, that God does not cause suffering and death.

'Fear not, for I have redeemed you,' God tells the nation Israel; 'I have called you by name and you are mine.'

Who could believe such a little nation could have overcome Pharaoh? But because she put her faith in the one true living God, she did.

Who could believe God could part the waters, and so bring salvation? But God did. And now, 'When you pass through the waters I will be with you,' God told this people in their struggles; 'and [when you pass] through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.'

The God we worship here today, the God to whom we commit our friend *, is the one who created all the world, the one who brings new life, the one who through God’s own power, and through Jesus, turns darkness into light, turns even death and grief around.

That’s the point, friends. If God creates, God recreates. To me, that’s one meaning of the resurrection.

It was through his suffering, death, and resurrection that we knew the authority and power of Jesus. God does not cause suffering or death, God creates, and so God raised his only Son that we might know that we, too, can commit our lives and loved ones to the power of the living God.

This is no small God we worship. This is no small God to whom we commit our friend *. This is the creator, the one who brings resurrection, the one who makes all things new, the one through whose son all things have been made one with God.

So it’s all right to grieve, but it’s also good to remember that we have committed *, we commit ourselves, to the power of the one true living God.

Let Us Pray

Almighty God, one through whom all things were made and will be remade, we trust you, and we believe the promise which you bring in Jesus.

Understand our grief. Understand our feelings as we face the tragedy of *’s death. And hold us up Lord.

We commit * to you, and put our faith in you — the one true living God, the one we know most perfectly in Jesus. Amen.


*Person’s first name
**Person’s full name