Who God is in Dark Times
How would you complete this sentence?
God is ______________.
How would you especially complete that sentence in dark and disappointing times? Would pain and suffering change the way you finish that sentence?
God is _____________.
Lisa Wingate’s novel Before We Were Yours tells the true story of how thousands of children belonging to single mothers and poverty stricken families were snatched away by Memphis’ Georgia Tann and then sold to families willing to pay to adopt them through the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. The story begins in the 1930’s with twelve year old Rill Foss. She lives with her mom and dad and and four younger siblings in a shanty boat moored on the shore of the Mississippi River across from Mud Island.
On this night her mother, Queenie, is giving birth to twins, but they are breech and won’t emerge. The midwife has exhausted her limited training. Queenie’s life drains away while Rill and her four siblings wait outside. Rill hears her father, Briny, pound in frustration and grief against the thin wall of the shanty boat inside. She hears the sound of “the tin man on the cross,” as she calls him, (her mother’s crucifix) fall to the ground. And she hears Briny kick the cross across the floor. He has no use for him. In this, perhaps the worst moment of his life, the God Briny imagines God to be, is not even worth hanging on wall.
The opening scene in the novel raises this critical question: Just who is God in dark and disappointing times?
Glory
One of the ways the Bible talks in general about the way we know who God is comes through the word “glory.” The word “glory” is often used in the Bible to describe how God reveals who he is. God’s “glory” often refers in Scripture to the way he displays certain things about himself through what is visible. Here are five things which reveal God’s glory. Five things which God uses to glorify himself–display his nature and character.
God’s Glory in Nature
First, God’s glory is seen in nature and creation. Creation displays the glory of God. For example, we read this:
The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. (Ps. 19:1 ESV)
1 In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train[a] of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!” (Isaiah 6:1-3 ESV)
Nature and creation, the whole earth, glorify God. God’s glory is displayed in nature and creation. Nature displays who God is.
Think of what we learn about God through what we see in nature. The beauty. The grandeur. The complexity. The awesomeness of it all. God is revealing something about himself through it.
Francis Collins headed up the Human Genome Project before serving as the Director of the National Institutes of Health. As a gifted medical student, Collins thought it was “convenient to not have to deal with God.” But then, after one of his patients told Collins about her faith, she asked him, “What about you? What do you believe?” In Collin’s own words, “I stuttered and stammered and felt the color rising in my face, and I said, ‘Well, I don’t think I believe in anything.’ But it suddenly seemed like a very thin answer. And that was unsettling.”
Then after a long period of searching, which included grilling a pastor and reading C.S. Lewis, Collins finally came to Christ after watching the beauty of creation. This is Collin’s description of that life-changing encounter:[1]
I had to make a choice. A full year had passed since I decided to believe in some sort of God, and now I was being called to account. On a beautiful fall day, as I was hiking in the Cascade Mountains during my first trip west of the Mississippi, the majesty and beauty of God’s creation overwhelmed my resistance. As I rounded a corner and saw a beautiful and unexpected frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, I knew the search was over. The next morning, I knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ.
The glory of God is displayed in nature and creation.
Take a moment and consider this for yourself:
Based on what I see in nature, I know that God is ___________.
God’s Glory in History
Second, we also see God’s glory displayed in history. History displays who God is. We read this:
none of the men who have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have put me to the test these ten times and have not obeyed my voice (Num 14:22 ESV)
God didn’t just create something and then step back and let his piece of art, creation, speak for him. He was and is much more active than that. God continued to step into that creation. He worked in human history. He works in human history. And each time he moves in human history, that work displays his glory. We learn something about who God is by watching him work in the course of human events and in the course of our lives.
For example, according to this Scripture, when God performed the miracles in Egypt and in the wilderness, leading his people to the land of promise, he wasn’t just doing something, he was displaying someone. He was displaying himself. He was showing his glory. These actions shed light on who he was and is.
This is why it’s often so helpful to do a spiritual timeline–to look back on our lives and reflect on how and when God worked in our lives. Those events shed light on who God is. This is also true of world events. History displays who God is.
Take a moment and consider this for yourself:
Based on what I see in history, I know that God is _______.
God’s Glory in Jesus
Third, we also see God’s glory displayed in Jesus. Jesus displays who God is. Listen to these words:
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God…14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (Jn. 1:1-2,14 ESV)
God’s glory was displayed in Jesus. Jesus displays who God is.
Not only in creation, not only in history, but most fully, in Jesus, do we see who God is. This is why Jesus matters so much. Paul puts it this way in Colossians:
For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily (Col. 2:9 ESV)
The Christian claim is that the fullness of God, all that God is, dwells bodily in Jesus.
Jesus puts it this way:
Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. (Jn. 14:9 ESV)
When we look at Jesus, we are seeing God. God is most fully displayed in Jesus. That’s what makes the Christian faith so different. That’s what makes Jesus so unique. In Jesus, God was making a personal visit to we could know him in the most intimate way possible.
I remember when the elders approved the position that Eric Gentry now has at Highland. We started receiving resumes. I remember when we got Eric’s resume. It was impressive. Strong academic background. Strong preaching experience. Impressive references. But there’s only so much you can really get to know about a person through a piece of paper. Once Eric and Lindsey came for a visit–that’s when I thought, Wow! We’ve got to hire this guy. He’s sharp! He’s multi-talented. He’s thoughtful. He’s organized. He’s serious about his spirituality.
Jesus was God making the on-site visit so that we could really get to know God. In person. Up close and personal.
Take a moment and consider this for yourself:
Based on what I see in Jesus, I know that God is _______.
God’s Glory in the Cross
Fourth, it was the cross itself that became one of the most surprising ways in which God’s glory was displayed. The cross displays who God is. This is perhaps one of the most unique claims of Christianity. IIt says that in the suffering of the cross, we find something glorious. We find something revealed about God in the midst of agony and pain.
The Gospel of John focuses on this. In three places, we find Jesus confessing the way in which “glory” is attached to the cross:
20 Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. 21 So these came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” 22 Philip went and told Andrew; Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. 23 And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit…27 “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name.” (Jn. 12:20-28 ESV)
21 After saying these things, Jesus was troubled in his spirit, and testified, “Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” 22 The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he spoke. 23 One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was reclining at table at Jesus’ side, 24 so Simon Peter motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. 25 So that disciple, leaning back against Jesus, said to him, “Lord, who is it?” 26 Jesus answered, “It is he to whom I will give this morsel of bread when I have dipped it.” So when he had dipped the morsel, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. 27 Then after he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, “What you are going to do, do quickly.” 28 Now no one at the table knew why he said this to him. 29 Some thought that, because Judas had the moneybag, Jesus was telling him, “Buy what we need for the feast,” or that he should give something to the poor. 30 So, after receiving the morsel of bread, he immediately went out. And it was night. 31 When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. (Jn. 13:21-31 ESV)
1 When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, (Jn. 17:1 ESV)
In each case, the context is the cross. Jesus is contemplating his death on the cross. And in each case, the cross is reframed as something through which Jesus and God are glorified. Jesus could pray for God to save him from this suffering. But instead he prays for God to be glorified through this suffering.
God’s glory is seen through creation. Through history and miraculous events. Through Jesus himself. But much more so through the harsh and harrowing event of the cross itself.
The cross is not just God revealing how we are to live, how God and Jesus deal with sin, or how God and Jesus deal with evil and darkness. The cross is also God revealing his glory–displaying his nature and his character. The cross is a window into the heart of God.
John Stott writes this:[2]
Sometimes we picture [God] lounging, perhaps dozing, in some celestial deck-chair, while the hungry millions starve to death … . It is this terrible caricature of God which the cross smashes to smithereens.
Take a moment and consider this for yourself:
Based on what I see in the cross, I know that God is _______.
God’s Glory in Suffering
And, ultimately, what this means is that we learn something about God even in times of our own suffering. Suffering displays who God is. We can see God even in the darkness of our own pain. Just as the suffering of Jesus revealed something about God, so now suffering continues to be something which reveals something to us about God.
Back in Lisa Wingate’s novel Before We Were Yours twelve year old Rill Foss is outside the cabin of Queenie and Briny’s shanty boat hearing her mother moan. Queenie is dying from a breech birth.Briny pounds the thin walls, knocking a cross off the wall. Seeing the cross, he kicks it across the floor. He has no use for God in a time dark and disappointing like this. Eventually, with the help of a neighbor, Briny takes Queenie by boat across the Mississippi to Memphis, hoping to get her to the doctor before she dies. In charge of her scared younger siblings, as a storm rolls in, Rill turns to that tin man on the cross:[3]
“My body’s boneless and weary, but my mind is running crazy. It can’t think a clear thought; it’s just spinning up nonsense words, like the Waterwitch turning the shallows, stirring leaves and twigs and bait grubs and muck.
It keeps on so that I don’t hear all the whining and complaining and sniggling and sniffling and Camellia egging it on by calling Fern a ninny and Lark a baby and another dirty word she ain’t even supposed to say.
Last thing, once they’re all in the bed bed and I turn the lanterns down, I take the tin man’s cross off the floor and hang him back on the wall where he belongs. Briny hasn’t got any use for him, but Queenie does and tonight he’s the only one here to watch over us.
Getting on my knees before I climb into bed, I whisper every word of Polish I know.”
Because of who God was in the suffering of the cross, he becomes someone we can turn to in our own times of suffering.
Take a moment and consider:
Based on what I see in suffering, I know that God is _______.
The cross is God displaying who he is so that, especially in dark times, we can know that he is a God worth turning to. Because of how God displays his glory in the cross, and in our suffering, we can know he’s not a God we just give up on and kick across the floor in dark times. He’s a God we can lean on in the worst times of life.
[1] Francis Collins, The Language of God (Free Press, 2007), p. 225
[2] John Stott, The Cross of Christ (InterVarsity Press, 2006), pp. 320, 333
[3] Lisa Wingate, Before We Were Yours, 36.
