When I began planning a sermon series some months ago on what it’s like to experience disappointment with the church, it wasn’t long before the thought came to me that I needed to say something about the times in our lives when we experience disappointment with God. Still, I resisted that leading for at least a few weeks. After all, I had my original concept very neatly planned out. But like a splinter in my brain, the leading would not go away, and so here we are – hearing Martha rasp, in a voice strangled by grief, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would NOT have DIED!”

Most of us know someone who has quit being part of his church, quit reading her Bible, or even quit praying because they have experienced a profound disillusionment in their walk with God. Most often, this has come as the result of a profound shock, a disruption for which they could never have been prepared. I think back nearly twenty years to a quavering voice on the other end of the phone, a voice that at first I could not put with a face. “This is Jennifer, in your Portuguese class. I sit in front of you.” I thought fast, and put the name with a face that I had seen featured in nationally-televised close-ups, a longhorn painted on its cheek – Jennifer the University of Texas cheerleader in the front row. Jennifer was calling so that I could pick up for her some classwork, as she would be absent the next week. She explained that back in Houston, as she had waited at home with her mother and 14-year old brother to surprise her dad for his birthday, the phone had rung. Her father had been severely injured in a car accident, and had not survived long enough for the family to reach the hospital to see him. I got her make-up work and met her to hand it over, saying how sorry I was about her dad. She thanked me, climbed into her drop-top BMW, and was gone.

Jennifer did return to class – but only for a few days. Then she vanished again. Three weeks later, another phone call. Jennifer was withdrawing for the semester, but would I meet with her? Evidently she had read in the Daily Texan an editorial defending the Bible, written by a Latin American Studies graduate student, and had recognized the name below the column as my own. She wanted, she said, to talk about God. I thought that sounded intimidating, even scary. But of course I said yes. I had no idea what I was getting into.

When we met, Jennifer seemed a pale shadow of her former, radiant self. In a subdued voice, she told me that two weeks after her father’s death, her brother had committed suicide. With that, her mother’s mind, still reeling from her husband’s recent death, simply gave way. Now the woman was institutionalized and medicated. Jennifer was withdrawing from school to try to care for her mother, amid the ashes of her life. After an oft-rehearsed account of the nightmare she was living, Jennifer got to what she’d wanted to talk about: “Can I ask you something? In my church, they always told me that God loves me and won’t let anything happen to me that I can’t handle. But if God loves me at all, even a little, how could He let this happen? I’ve lost everything. My mom can’t even cry with me. I feel like God, if there is a god, hates me. I don’t even know who God is anymore.”

And there you have it. What would you say? Or maybe more to the point, have you ever been in such a barren place yourself? Perhaps you are there now. If so, I have only a few words for you. I had many words for Jennifer, though I doubt even a few were helpful. But now, however, I offer these three, and they are a reminder, a caution, and an encouragement.

First, the reminder: God is just, and God always good. Life also is good, and sometimes life is appallingly unfair. But God is God, life is life, and we ought not confuse the two. God is not the Author of every cruelty, every betrayal, every intrusion into our lives by illness and death. There are those who believe that, I recognize, but they would protect God’s sovereignty and power at a terrible price to God’s goodness and love. Every shock to our lives, every agony and heartbreak we encounter as God’s perfect Will? I don’t buy that. Jesus warned against that (Lk. 13:2-4; Jn. 9:3). God is always good. So let’s remember that God and Life ought not be confused.

Now the word of caution: when we like Martha, like Jennifer, find ourselves deep in a well of grief and pain, we may wonder how God could have failed to show up. So profound is the pain we feel, we may even project our experience of it onto God. If we are bitter and angry, we may conclude that the God of the universe is an angry, wrathful deity. Moreover, if we have long held to the idea that we could control God by our religion or our beliefs, as if God were some sort of tag-team partner, some cosmic good luck charm against evil, we will almost certainly be due for a painful disappointment. We may well then in hurt and anger abandon God, as Jennifer was tempted to abandon God.

But of course, what we are actually then rejecting is only a mistaken idea of God. We abandon the failed Secret Santa god, the little god who failed to honor our contract and protect us from harm. That little god did not show up to fix things for us. We are wise to reject such a false image of God. Leave that little god behind, because that is not the mysterious God Who is often silent when we demand explanations, who often interrupts when we would prefer to be left alone! Reject any false god for the chance to wrestle, like Jacob, with the only true God! To live in God’s universe means that, like Job, we may need to learn that God does not owe us an explanation. We may need to discover, however painfully, that God may be bigger than we spent our lives imagining.

Now the third word – and it is a word of encouragement. If we are forced to abandon our old notions of God, there is a new possibility for us – a new pathway to deeper relationship with the Creator. It’s even something you might call a miracle – or at least the possibility for one. When word of Lazarus’ illness reached Jesus, we might suppose he would have grabbed up the hem of his robe and run like mad to get to Lazarus’ bedside. After all, John tells us explicitly that Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. But in the very next sentence, John says “yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick, [Jesus] stayed where he was for two days” (11:6). John almost makes it sound as if it is because Jesus loves this family so much that he does not rush to rescue them. But how could such a thing be?

A careful reading of John 11 suggests that Lazarus has already died by the time word reaches Jesus of his illness – but even so, Jesus does not rush to comfort Martha and Mary. He lets them endure terrible grief. The Savior shows up late. How could that possibly be love?

You know, sometimes, when life gets unmanageable, we start praying a bit harder. We send for Jesus, ask him to come and help. Mary and Martha did that. There is nothing wrong with that. Jesus tells us elsewhere to pray for what we need (Lk. 11). But it’s also true that Jesus is not going to show us salvation by rescuing the things we are most afraid of losing. We might want that. We might ask for him to do that. But Jesus loves us too much to allow our health, or our job, or our marriage to become the hub and center of our salvation. Because if that were to happen, we’d be lost. Jesus in fact resisted this temptation, and relied solely upon his Father. It is exactly because he loves us, that he will teach us to do likewise.

And therein lies the Good News! When trouble or heartbreak intrudes upon our lives, it is no power of ours that can save us. There is no memory verse, no remembered sermon, no magical certainty of faith that can rescue us. When the time of trial comes, when we have laid aside the false idol of a good-luck-charm-in-my-pocket minigod, we will squarely face reality: we need someone to come and save us. When that which we were so afraid would happen has happened, we need salvation. So it will be our appointed salvation who comes, who comes when Lazarus has died, when our job is lost, when our marriage is over, when our health is gone. That’s when we’ll need more than a boost. Then we’ll need more than a pick-me up. Then we need a miracle.

And that’s all God has to offer, sisters and brothers. His name is Jesus. And the word on the wire is that nothing, neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in him.

Thanks be to God!