When Kelly James and two climbing buddies died on Oregon\u2019s Mount Hood in the USA, his brother Frank, a professor of theology, admitted: \u2018It\u2019s one thing to talk about death in the abstract. It\u2019s another to cope with the death of someone you love\u2026 Death is ugly. We can\u2019t<\/i>\u2014and shouldn\u2019t<\/i>\u2014try to make it palatable with pious platitudes\u2026 One question haunts me, \u201cWhere was God when Kelly was freezing to death?\u201d For me not<\/i> to ask would be a failure to take God seriously\u2026 I\u2019m not suggesting mere mortals stand in judgment of God\u2026 God doesn\u2019t report to me. But an honest question from a broken heart is a good and righteous thing.\u2019 <\/p>\n
David wasn\u2019t afraid to ask God, \u2018How long will You hide Your face?\u2019<\/i> Then a few verses later the same distressed David declares, \u2018But I trust in Your unfailing love.\u2019<\/i> (Psalm 13:5 NIV) <\/p>\n
Frank James continues: \u2018Amid all the spiritual consternation God manifested Himself in my grief. Somehow He\u2019s found in the disappointment, confusion, and raw emotions. This doesn\u2019t exactly make sense to me, and I don\u2019t like it. But my concept of faith has become Abrahamic\u2026 I must trust God even when I don\u2019t understand\u2026 as Christians have confessed for centuries, \u201cWe look for the resurrection of the dead\u201d (see 1 Corinthians 15:42)\u2026 Amid enough tears to fill an ocean\u2026 we\u2019ve had to bury loved ones. But we bury them with this promise, \u201cFor as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.\u201d<\/i> (1 Corinthians 15:22 NIV) It doesn\u2019t indemnify us against grief\u2026 It does, however, take faith to depths where hope begins to poke through the heartache, like a sunbeam piercing a cloudy sky.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Kelly James and two climbing buddies died on Oregon\u2019s Mount Hood in the USA, his brother Frank, a professor of theology, admitted: \u2018It\u2019s one thing to talk about death in the abstract. It\u2019s another to cope with the death of someone you love\u2026 Death is ugly. We can\u2019t\u2014and shouldn\u2019t\u2014try to make it palatable with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1361"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}