(reflecting on the stillborn birth of baby Christian Zion, born asleep at 28 weeks on July 17, 2016)
Stillborn. The paradox of life and death sewn together in the same word. But death has triumphed. What a cruel word. What a pitiful experience for any who witness its reality.
I cannot sleep. The light in the baby warmer is on, but there’s isn’t a baby for the warmer. I call the nurse to come and shut off the light so its painful reminder doesn’t burn through the night. Why didn’t they think of that? Everything about this experience is a dead end. And the birthing process itself only serves as a mocking reminder that things are not what they should have been.
Has the Lord brought you to this dismal place? Maybe not in the actual sense of childbirth, but to a place of loss where there should have been life? A place pregnant with expectation yet dried up by death. Does it feel like you have “arrived” only to discover you are at a dead end in your life?
Perhaps you have come to all the glamour of those teenage years only to feel rejected by your peers? Or maybe you have delightfully arrived at adulthood only to watch your dreams of marriage slip away like the last rose petals in Beauty and the Beast. Or maybe failed pregnancy tests litter your rubbish bin like so many painful jabs from Peninnah who taunted Hannah’s barrenness (1 Samuel 1:2-7). Maybe your twenty-fifth wedding anniversary is pierced by pornography, or maybe the happy joys of being new grandparents have been shattered by an estranged family. Or maybe you have entered the golden years brimming with plans for leisure and travel only to be tattooed as “widow” and left side-lined from the couples’ crowd?
Or maybe you could fill in the blank with your own private place of loss where there should have been joy. I am sad you have come to this place. Yet it is a place of reality for all who have ever dared to dream – even for Creator God as he walked through His garden looking for Adam and Eve who had gone missing.[1] Can’t you just imagine the jeers and the smugness of Satan as he looked on this brand-new creation still hot off the press yet utterly flawed? Can you feel the pain of the first parents who witnessed the death of their son at the hands of his own brother?[2] Can you imagine the sad separation of families as the lofty dreams of the tower of Babel faded into the distance.?[3] Can you even just try to imagine Abraham’s realization that the long-awaited son of God’s promise was to be his next sacrifice on the altar?[4] Can you piece together the coat of Joseph’s suffering in the face of his father’s love[5] or imagine the freshly freed slaves as Pharoah’s army pounded into their praise songs?[6]
Can we skip over countless stories of hope dashed by loss, and leap to the climax of all time to huddle with the disciples behind closed doors while the Hope of all the earth was locked in a tomb.[7] Could there ever have been a more staggering loss—when puny, mortal, created beings rose up and slew their own Creator?
While I cannot enter your personal story, I can tell you with all the assurance of God’s Word behind me: God is there. God is in your grief. God is inside the walls of your tomb.
And though you may imagine God’s blessing resides with the happy faces on Instagram, it’s time to understand God is not so much in king’s palaces as He is in John’s wilderness.[8] So, you may ask. Where is He then? Why do you not feel Him or sense His presence in your present difficulty? Why do you feel so empty? Why do the verses quoted by well-meaning Christians boomerang off the walls of your prison? And why are you pumping breastmilk in a funeral home?
Friend, take off your shoes. God is in this place.
Did the exiles of Daniel’s day think they were alone in their captivity? I’m sure they did. They knew they were the ones who had sinned. God, they knew, was in His holy temple – until He showed up in the hellish flames of the fiery furnace.[9] Who would have thought God would go that far?
“I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your presence!
If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there.
If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans,
even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me.
I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night—
but even in darkness I cannot hide from you. To you the night shines as bright as day.
Darkness and light are the same to you” (Psalm 139:7-12 NLT).
So remember, the darkness which blocks your view of the future doesn’t look like that to Him. He sees around the corner and He sees a path through the water that no one knew was there. That dead end which looks so hopeless, the severe disability that has no healing, and the heart broken beyond repair is His new dwelling place.
“The high and lofty one who lives in eternity, the Holy One, says this: ‘I live in the high and holy place with those whose spirits are contrite and humble. I restore the crushed spirit of the humble and revive the courage of those with repentant hearts’” (Isaiah 57:15 NLT).
Your stillborn dream, still wet with the promise and anticipation for life’s best, yet trapped by death’s cold stare, is not an obstacle to Him who burst through death’s rocky tomb. He is not hampered by the dried, dead bones of your inadequacies. Your weakness is merely a platform for His glory.
So look up. God not only dwells in our lowest pit, He also dwells in the midst of our praise. You might find it hard or nearly impossible to give praise just now. But in God’s gracious and gentle timing you will eventually come to a place where you will hear him say: “Will you also go away?” (John 6:67 Amp). We will either turn to him or away from him. Your broken hallelujah is a place of worship. God is very close to you there. When by his extended grace we can come to a place of acceptance and find it in our hearts to praise him through our pain, he meets us there.* It is in fact an altar of sacrifice.
“Therefore, let us offer through Jesus a continual sacrifice of praise to God, proclaiming our allegiance to his name” (Hebrews 13:15 NLT).
And somehow the miracle of it all is this: where God is, death cannot abide. The maggots cannot grow in the manna though kept for many years; the dead walking stick grows blossoms; and a spring bubbles up in our dryest desert.
“My dear friend, when grief presses you to the dust, worship there.”
C H Spurgeon
*“But You are holy, O You Who dwell in the holy place where the praises of Israel are offered” (Psalm 22:3 Amp).
[1] Genesis 3:8
[2] Genesis 4:8
[3] Genesis 11:1-9
[4] Genesis 22:1,2
[5] Genesis 37-40
[6] Exodus 14:10,11
[7] John 20:19
[8] Matthew 11:7-11
[9] Daniel 3:24,25
