Waves That Rock Us

My dad died a little over a week ago. I was celebrating my 30^th wedding anniversary on a Christian Alaskan Cruise when I got word of his death. You can imagine the mix of emotions in that situation.  What makes my dad’s passing hardest is that he refused the existence of God and refused Jesus even in his last days.  He would use the name of Jesus, but only in vain in the form of a curse word.

        

As a daughter, how do I deal with all of this? The same way we deal with all of life’s challenges. We press hard into the one relationship we know that is rock solid – the relationship that we have with our heavenly Father. The day before I got news of his death, I took notes from Dr. Charles Stanley, who was the keynote speaker on our cruise. He shared that God has given us a lot of promises in the Bible and we need to live our lives relying on those promises. Then Dr. Stanley taught that with all those promises, the one thing that God did not promise was “understanding.”  That really struck me. The way to handle life’s challenges is not to try to “understand” them, but instead we need to rest in the promises that we do know. 

These are the promises in which I am resting from Matthew 11:28-29:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

God in His grace allowed me to be on this cruise full of Christian teaching and music as I received word of my dad’s death. After I received the news in the afternoon, I attended a concert that night where a saxophonist played, “It is Well with My Soul.” It was like God was playing that just for me. I had related the story behind that song to my Bible study class several years ago. The writer of the hymn (Horatio Spafford), had lost his son, his business, and most recently, his four daughters had tragically died at sea. I can’t imagine the pain from so much loss. As Spafford later sailed over the location where they believed his daughters were drowned at sea, he went down to the bottom of the ship to get as close to them as he could and he penned, “When sorrow like sea billows roll; it is well, it is well with my soul.” I, too, was at sea with the ship rolling in the sea billows, and the words went straight to my heart. I did not find understanding, but what I found was so much better. My burdened soul found rest and I could truly say, “It is well with my soul”. The ship gently rocked me to sleep that night, and I slept like a rock as God my forever Father was and is faithful to his promises.