Will our laboring in the Lord be in vain as suffering continues around us?
“What’s going on?!” I ask Nikki, as she slows down the car.
It’s dark and hard to see, but it looks like a woman is standing in the middle of the road waving her arms. We can hear muffled shouting through the car windows.
Nikki comes to a complete stop as we try to make sense of the scene in front of us. We are close enough now to hear the lady in the road yelling, “Move over! Get over!” Behind her is why she is frantically getting people’s attention: a car that has spun around is facing forward, the front is smashed in, the windows are shattered, and a woman in the driver’s seat is halfway hanging out…
Motionless.
Nikki attempts to move over into the slow line of traffic making its way in the other lane to pass the car. I quickly roll my window down and yell at the woman in the road, “You are going to get hit, hon! You need to get out of the road!”
I realize that she is concerned that cars won’t stop in time in the darkness, causing a car pile-up. But I am more concerned for her own life right now.
As Nikki drives past the accident, I see a man standing in the grass on his phone. A semi-truck is parked in the middle turning lane, and I assume he is the driver and part of the accident. My window is still open, so I yell out the most obvious question, “Did someone call 911?” Kinda a dumb question, but in the moment it’s the first thing you wonder.
He keeps talking on his phone while Nikki keeps driving. I want to look longer at the woman hanging out of the car, but I can’t. I stifle a sob.
“Pull over. What should we do? I’m going to cry!” My words are jumbled. Nikki pulls into a parking lot, where we are close enough to watch.
I can tell Nikki is in shock. I’m trying to decide what to do. Should I get out and go help? I feel like I can’t just sit here helpless, but I also feel frozen. A car pulls in behind us, and a woman gets out of the car and quickly walks over to the scene.
“What if we stay until the police and ambulance arrive?” I suggest, feeling a little relief that someone is helping.
“We should pray,” Nikki responds. She prays. Or did I pray? No, I think she prayed. This is what happens when you are in shock: you cannot remember all the details. Usually, I remember and can write out vividly the order of events. But I’m sorry if this is choppy, because I can’t recall everything, even though it happened only two nights ago.
But I still remember the unconscious woman…and I wish I could unsee it.
Within a few minutes that seemed much longer, we hear sirens. Once the fire truck and police arrive, Nikki drives toward home. We are both a little shook up. One of us says, “In a matter of only a few minutes, that could have been us.” We make small talk until she pulls into my driveway.
“Are you going to be OK?” Nikki asks me as I grab my backpack from the back seat of her car.
“Yeah. Text me when you get home, OK?” I tell her, even though she lives seven minutes from my house.
I head to bed and fall asleep quickly because I am too tired to process it all.
Photo from Wayne Township Fire Department Facebook page
But I wake up with…
Guilt.
Guilt that I just sat there. That I didn’t get out, go over, and at least pray over the woman. Maybe she was still conscious! Maybe she could hear me, and I could have told her about Jesus! What if that was her last moment on earth? I search online for any news coverage and crash incident websites. Is the woman alive? Is she dead? I’ll never know.
I text Nikki wondering how she is doing. As soon as she dropped me off the previous night, she called her husband and sobbed. She had a rough night because she was so shaken and couldn’t sleep. She was afraid she would dream and see the woman. She finally fell asleep and was doing OK.
Nikki then asks me how I am doing. I explain to her how I’m struggling with guilt, but trying to pray and give it to the Lord, trusting in His sovereignty.
She texts me back:
“I’m so sorry you are struggling with guilt. It came out of nowhere, it was dark, probably not the best area, and we both were very shaken by the scene. And I’m not sure how I would’ve felt if you got out of the car!
We are faulty creatures and we froze. It’s a totally natural response to high stress situations. The best thing we can do is continue to pray for her and I’m hoping you’ll pray also for God to help you give yourself grace friend. The Lord is Sovereign and He knew how we were going to handle it…His plan and purpose are not thwarted because we froze.”
I thank Nikki for her encouragement, speaking truth, and praying for me. Then I rush out the door because all four kids have dentist appointments. Tears are on the verge of spilling out, but I stuff my thoughts, worries, and guilt…
Until the afternoon when I’m alone and in my favorite place to let it all out…the shower.
I sit down, let the water hit me, and sob.
This release of emotion has been building, and this incident was the tip of the iceberg. Why is death everywhere?! Why did Nikki and I have to see that? And what about all my friends’ sufferings?
I list in my head the last few weeks…
Triggers and grief over a friend’s death.
A friend faithfully sends me updates on her friend’s three-year-old son who is fighting for his life after a near-drowning accident.
A notification dings on my phone, “Please pray for the family of my friend. He committed suicide earlier tonight.”
My neighbor poured out her heart of grief to me regarding her mother who had a brain tumor. The doctors gave her mom possibly three months to live. Yet, she passed a day later.
Kherington looks through my old photo albums and asks me about the pictures of one of my close childhood friends. She sees the funeral program and asks, “How did she die, Mom?” How do you explain to your innocent daughter the complexity of suicide? Choking back tears, I share enough for her to grasp for now, as she lays her head on my arm to console me.
Then I pass this woman, who I won’t ever know if that night was her last on earth.
As these thoughts flash through my mind, I continue to sob, yet turn to the Lord…
“I can’t carry all of this, Lord! It’s too much. I know I don’t have to carry it. But can’t you do something about all of this death that continues around me and my friends?”
“I did.”
The Spirit speaks. I hear. I remember what He did, because recently I finished studying 1 Corinthians…
“For this corruptible must be clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal must be clothed with immortality. When this corruptible is clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal is clothed with immortally, then the saying that is written will take place:
Death has been swallowed up in victory.
Death, where is your victory?
Death, where is your sting?
Now the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!”
(1 Corinthians 15:53-57, HCSB)
He did something about death: He died and came back to life to defeat it. The only hope we have to make it through this life is trusting in the power we have over sin and death because of His death and resurrection.
But I wasn’t done with my lament. “Lord, I’m too empathetic…I absorb people’s pain too easily. I know you made me this way. But why, God? Why do I have to be the one that continues to write about grief and death? Can’t I write about something happier?”
“To comfort others.”
The Spirit speaks again. I hear. I remember because I read the day before in 2 Corinthians 1…
“Praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so through Christ our comfort also overflows. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort, which is experienced in your endurance of the same sufferings that we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that as you share in the sufferings, so you will share in the comfort.” (2 Corinthians 1:3-7, HCSB)
How do I bring comfort when there is continual death all around us? We have to keep reading in 1 Corinthians 15. We are quick to take great passages out of context, and then we miss the whole point. After Paul tells us to give thanks to God for the victory over death through Jesus Christ, he gives us a “therefore.” And when you see a “therefore,” I’ve been told that means you need to ask, "What is it there for?”
“Therefore, so then, so that…
Be steadfast, stand firm, be strong…
Immovable, let nothing move you…
Always excelling, abounding, give yourself fully, enthusiastically…
in the Lord’s work…
Knowing that your labor in the Lord is not in vain, useless.”
(1 Corinthians 15:58, HCSB, ESV, NIV, NLT, NASB, Strong’s Concordance)
At first glance, this sounds harsh and flippant. Really, Paul? Be strong and steadfast? I almost broke holding my two lifeless sons. Don’t let anything move you? Depression and anxiety are rampant. We are immobilized by the suffering and pain in this world and are tempted to give up, not stand and take the next step in front of us.
I’m sitting in this shower and don’t want to get up, because I find relief with the water drowning out the world around me. But when we become paralyzed, we become cynical and apathetic. Apathy leads to not giving ourselves fully to the Lord’s work. We then aren’t doing the Lord’s work because we question if the cost to follow Jesus is worth it because of the continued suffering around us.
All of this laboring, praying, counseling, encouraging, sharing our lives and the gospel…will it be in vain? Because people are still committing suicide. People are dying of cancer. People are losing their children. People are being martyred for Jesus. People are trapped in cars with their lives on the line.
It seems that Paul is flippant, but only because his eyes are not on earth. He understood that “man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow” (Psalm 144:4, HCSB) for each and every one of us. We say we believe in Heaven, yet act like earth is all there is. He is encouraging us that until the day we mortals become immortal, we can stand firm, continuing to labor in the Lord because of those preceding verses…
This. This is our hope. This is the why of the “therefore,” the “so then,” the “so that”…
Our faith in Jesus Christ can be steadfast and immovable because He cannot break His promise.
We can get up and fervently give all of our lives to the Lord’s work of sharing this gospel message.
We must not let the sorrows of the world overtake us. People around us need to hear this hope, giving them a chance to believe that Jesus can save them from their sin and eternal death before it’s too late.
We can be confident that it all won’t be in vain, useless, or return empty, because Jesus already defeated death and sin. It is over. “It is finished.”
The truth of the Word and the Spirit calm me because His peace and presence surround me. I have the strength now to get up because I hope in the promise of victory. I won’t give up sharing this gospel. I feel lighter since I don’t need to carry the death around me…
He already carried it to the cross.
(Nikki later found a Facebook post about the accident on the town’s fire department page. The woman was trapped in the car and taken to the hospital. We don’t know anything else.)
